- Hey everybody, welcome to Michigan Out-of-Doors.

Thank you so much for joining us this week.

We're out doing a little goose hunting this morning, hoping for some good action, but so far, the geese are winning.

But on this week's show, we're gonna kick things off by doing a little crappie fishing and then we're going to head to the Port of Ludington and do a little salmon fishing with a really cool group of people.

So make sure you stay tuned.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger.

It's time for Michigan Out-of-Doors.

♪ From the first spring rains to the soft summer breeze ♪ ♪ Dancing on the pine forest floor ♪ ♪ The autumn colors catch your eyes ♪ ♪ Here come the crystal winter skies ♪ ♪ It's Michigan ♪ Michigan Out-of-Doors - [Jimmy] What a beautiful day in the woods.

♪ Someday our children all will see ♪ ♪ This is their finest legacy ♪ Wonder and the love of Michigan ♪ ♪ As the wind comes whispering through the trees ♪ ♪ The sweet smell of nature's in the air ♪ ♪ From the Great Lakes to the quiet stream ♪ ♪ Shining like a sportsman's dream ♪ ♪ it's a love of Michigan we all share ♪ - [Jenny] Michigan Out-of-Doors is presented by.

- [Narrator] By Country Smokehouse, a sportsman's destination since 1988, featuring varieties of homemade sausage, jerky, brats and gourmet entrees.

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(tense music) (rifle booming) (upbeat music) (bright music) - [Jimmy] This week found me in Northern Michigan, out on the water with an angler targeting crappie, where we were putting some of the latest and greatest technology to work, trying to dial in a species that can be pretty tough to locate during the summer months.

(bright music) - You got to keep them coming up like they're chasing.

There he is.

In the summertime when it's really hot, the crappie move out to the middle.

You don't see a lot of people fishing crappie up at the bank like they do in the springtime.

So on your local lake, the deepest part of the lake is where those crappies will be suspended.

What we're gonna do today is target those with LiveScope, Garmin LiveScope, and that's about the only way to efficiently do it.

You can drift and catch some.

The chances of you being able to stay on that school without them moving are pretty slim.

So having some sort of electronics, whether that's LiveScope or utilizing 2D, just to stay on that school is really important.

Those crappie only come up once a year for the most part.

They come up in the spring to spawn.

But in the summer and in the winter, they're pretty much the same fish.

They're just harder to access in the summertime because you have to have a boat and you have to have some sort of electronics to find them.

They're so pretty in these tannicky waters, they get such a green yellow color to them.

And I caught them recently in a really kind of a chalky, more blue lake and they're super silver colored.

It's just interesting how much different they look, but I like the colorful ones.

- [Jimmy] It didn't take long to start putting fish in the boat.

We quickly found them on LiveScope and for the most part, they were willing to cooperate.

For guys in their 20s like Jaden, forward facing sonar isn't just a new tool.

It's something they have grown up with.

But as he'll tell you, the technology has changed the game.

- For most of my fishing life, at least when I could fish alone, I have had LiveScope.

But I know it has changed how people fish and it has opened up a world of fish that people never even knew were there.

Like bass, crappie, bluegill, tons of other species too.

So many fish live out in the abyss, out in absolutely nowhere.

And now you can actually target those fish.

And they're getting smart to it.

They're evolving as they have with every other piece of electronics that have come through fishing over the last 50 years.

But it's definitely changed the game.

Fun to catch.

- Finding them on the screen is one thing, but getting those light biting summer crappie into the boat comes down to having the right tackle.

And the rod setup is a crucial part of that equation.

- Still not the giants that I know live out here, but that's a pretty dang good crappie.

Coming from the bass world, my setup for catching these crappies is a little bit different than most, but it's a very specific setup.

So this is a Daiwa Kage.

It's a 610 light and it's called the Ned rod.

So it's still got a pretty solid backbone, but it has got an absolute feather light tip on it.

So for one, that allows me to really be able to work that minnow and get it really erratic action.

And two, I'm not pulling it out of the mouth.

Crappie have really soft mouths, so I'm not gonna rip it right out of their mouth.

And I'm running that to, I have a six pound leader to a quarter ounce Z-Man Ned head, and then that is a three inch Strike King Z2.

So it's a little bit smaller than the baby Z2.

And it's about the perfect size for those crappie.

You can see the smaller ones have been nipping that tail up and we're not quite hooking them, but those 10 inchers, nine or 10 inchers and up don't have any problem getting that whole thing in their mouth.

And it's very soft.

So even when they hit this with their mouth, it curls in super easily and you can hook 'em just like that.

There's a little bit of a bass fisherman hook set on a crappie, but that's where that soft tip comes in.

(bright music) (water splashing) That's another one of those real good ones.

He's hungry.

Keep him coming up and there he is.

That is so fun to watch.

I've caught thousands of fish watching them come up and eat like that.

And it doesn't matter if they're bluegill, crappie, bass.

Oh, he's a little tangled up.

It is the most fun thing in the world, I think.

Well, maybe minus catching them on a frog or flipping jig.

It's so fun.

(bright music) So everyone rigs their minnows a little differently, whether you're crappie fishing or bass fishing, but there's one very small and very specific thing I do with a minnow that's three inches long to a minnow that's seven inches long.

And that is I don't rig it perfectly straight like your typical setup.

So what I do is I run it in there just high of center, so not right in the center of the nose.

And this looks a little bit different on a bigger minnow.

It makes a bigger difference.

But I run it in there and I get it.

When you pull it on there, typically, your hook is gonna line up right about here with your bait and I run it a little bit shorter.

We almost got a little too much there.

Again, this is emphasized on a bigger minnow.

See how we have quite a bit of shank out?

And what that does is it just allows this bait to roll under there a little bit easier.

And when you're fishing for crappie or bass with a minnow like this, you want to get as much of this bait out of the way as possible to hook them.

And when you do that, you just give this bait more room to get out of the way so that you can get a better hookup ratio.

There's a couple good ones in that school.

(reel whirring) (water splashing) There's a 12 incher.

Wow, he got it good too, look at that.

Your best friend, especially out here, is competition.

Those solo ones, sometimes they're hungry and they'll come up and eat, but when you can get two, three or four fish all fighting over the same bait, you'll always find it a few inches farther back because they want to fight over it.

- [Jimmy] While modern electronics help you catch them once you're on the water, actually figuring out where to launch the boat in the first place is a whole different puzzle.

Up here in Northern Michigan, there's no shortage of water to choose from, so Jaden relies heavily on mapping technology like onX Fish to figure out what lakes even have crappie and to pinpoint potential fishing locations before he ever leaves the house.

- Not every lake has crappie, right?

But one thing that you can use to find lakes with crappie is onX Fish and you can actually filter by species.

So if you open up the onX Fish app, you can filter.

Are you looking for crappie, bluegill, bass, whatever your target species is, and it's gonna show you every lake in your area or their search area that has those.

So like this lake, all I had to do is filter by crappie.

It showed that there was a lot of crappie in this lake.

And then after that, I look for the biggest bowl, biggest deep bowl in the lake.

That's where those crappies are gonna be, June, July, August.

When it's hot out, they're gonna be in that 18, 20, 30 foot bowl, and generally they're gonna be suspended.

But using the onX Fish app to filter by species and target whatever your target species is, super easy.

(bright music) 13 inches.

That's a pretty good one.

Those are the ones where I'm like, ah, it might be a bass.

There's a couple more of those out here.

We might be able to get this one to eat.

Pair of two hanging down there.

(bright music) - [Jimmy] We caught a ton of fish throughout the afternoon and enjoyed a beautiful night on the water.

Thanks to Jaden for teaching us all a little more about the world of crappie fishing and some of the technology being used to target these fish.

All in all, it was a great night on the water here in Northern Michigan.

(bright music) (water splashing) Well, what we're going to do next is head to the Port of Ludington and do a little fishing with a father-son team and a really young crew that really knows how to fish that water pretty darn well.

- How you doing, sir?

Mark.

- [Jimmy] A couple weeks back, I got to hit the water with raffle winner Eric Edgington and his son Eli.

Eric had entered a raffle during the Ultimate Sports Show in Grand Rapids at the Greenstone Farm Credit Booth.

So here we were today with a rather unique and very young captain and crew.

- This is a set in color, so I run all the lead core out and then we wait until we go to the braid backing here and then I'll put one of these planer boards on and then we will send it back there and get it away from the boat.

It's just another technique used to give these fish another option to bite here.

Yeah.

- We're looking for a spot in the boat.

There's been a lot of boats out here during the week.

I'm sure the camera probably don't pick them up great in the dark, but there's boats for about probably five miles all the way up and down along here, so there's quite a few.

- So this is off the point north of Ludington?

- [Bo] Yep, we're up on the point.

We're in 115 foot of water, basically right off the point.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

And then are you looking for a certain depth or what are you trying to do?

- We're marking some pretty good fish right here, but I'm kind of gonna slide back in because it's been a little better on the inside in the morning.

Like 90 foot and then we'll work our way out as the day goes on.

- [Jimmy] And is it all flies?

Are you running spoons or a little bit of everything?

- A lot of flies and spoons.

So spoons have been good.

We've been getting some good J-plug bites right off the bat, so hopefully those fire again.

- These big kings were giving Eli all he wanted, so we swapped in dad from time to time, but he was doing great.

- Back up.

- Back up.

- Back up.

- There we go.

- First one on, Eli.

- That guy ate a lot of stuff.

- [Jimmy] Nice job.

What do you think, guys?

- This is pretty awesome so far.

- Oh my gosh.

- He is huge.

- Pretty big.

Out here maybe 10 minutes, I already got one on.

- [Jimmy] The earlier the better seemed to be the ticket and everyone knew it.

There were boats all over the place.

- All right.

Keep going.

(reel whirring) - [Jimmy] What do you think, Eli, you got a big one on there?

- Probably.

- Probably.

- [Angler] For me, stop for me.

(water rustling) - What even is that?

A big one too.

- Whoa, look at that guy!

That's even bigger than the last one.

- Oh my gosh.

- [Jimmy] To say Allie and Jillian are good anglers could be quite an understatement.

Both are licensed mates and handled the boat like a couple of pros.

- So a lot of our lines are actually fishing somewhere between the 60 to 100 range because especially back there, we hit a ton of fish.

We had marking a ton of fish right in that range.

So we've got our divers about there and we're getting our out and downs and our shoot down there and trying to go get them.

- [Jimmy] Does it change day to day or is it about the same?

- It's always changing.

- Okay.

- Every day's a little different.

- [Jimmy] And does color matter much or is it more just get them in the right spot?

- Everything matters.

Every little detail matters a little bit, but if they're hungry, they're hungry.

- Okay.

So it's a new challenge every day?

- It's a new challenge every day.

Just get to adapt every single day.

No two days there alike.

- We were on Mark Williams' boat today, and Mark is very involved with a new fishing group here in the state that is doing some good work.

- It's called the Michigan Anglers Consortium, MIanglers.com.

And it was formed, of course, with all the stuff going on with the DNR.

We got the hunting side and the fishing side.

And what we found out was, is that anglers were not being represented.

So during the bill process and working with Randy Claremont and the different legislatures, they just didn't have the representation that the hunters had.

Everything costs money, so of course, you got to be there in Lansing.

So we went ahead and a group of us, Brian Burrows, Ed Blissic from GLSI, Brian Burrows from Trout Unlimited, we got together and started the Michigan Anglers Consortium.

And it's just for anglers, but it's for all anglers.

Well, the goal is to basically unify all the anglers.

Everybody knows MUCC went away and they were a great organization for many years, but they got focused on more of hunting and environmental issues.

And we actually heard on the Senate floor that anglers don't care, anglers don't matter.

They won't step up when it's time or anything of that nature.

So that was very untrue.

And so we decided that, hey, we need to be heard, and we created this.

It's for all anglers, it's not just for charter boats.

It's not just for Great Lakes fishermen.

It's for every angler that's out there.

We say every rod and reel has a voice now, and we actually have a lobbyist, which is Bill Jackson from Merchant & Associates, and they've been MUCC's lobbyists.

So we actually have a voice now down there in Lansing.

- [Jimmy] We definitely were not red hot today.

We did miss a few here and there, but overall, we seem to be doing about as good as any of the boats so far today.

- It's pretty slow.

So we got a few on paddles and flies this morning seem to be the predominant ones.

So now we're out here in 300 foot and we're trying to fish bottom.

There's some marks down deep, so we're gonna see what that does.

We just got it down there and it went off, but we missed it.

So we're trying it again.

- So this has been slower than it's been the last week or two?

- Yeah.

The fishing's been pretty good the last couple weeks, but today's been slow for some reason.

So we had a storm up north this morning, so I'm wondering if the lightning and all that kind of slowed them down a little bit.

- [Jimmy] It was a fun day on the water for sure.

Both Eric and Eli caught the biggest fish they'd ever caught, which is always a good day.

I'm thinking he was pretty happy that he filled out the raffle ticket.

- Well, we were at the Ultimate Sports Show and we were out there filling out some raffles and ended up winning.

So we are just grateful to be here and to get outside on this beautiful day with my son and to enjoy a little fishing.

And thankfully we got a great crew to help us bring in some pretty good salmon.

- [Jimmy] You guys got your biggest fish ever today?

- That was today, yeah.

We got some pretty big salmon and we're excited to take them home and enjoy those later with the family.

- [Jimmy] All right.

Well, thanks for being here today.

- Yeah, thank you too.

- Thanks to Mark for all he's doing with the Consortium, and thanks to the crew today for a wonderful day on the water.

Pretty cool to see the next generation so involved and doing so well here in Michigan's out-of-doors.

Well, even though we're not having any success here in the early goose season, there are some folks that did pretty well in other parts of the state.

(gentle music) - Hey guys, we're here on today at this loaf hunt.

We're in the Lansing area.

A lot of birds been coming here midday, hanging out.

I think any birds before eight o'clock, bonus birds, but I think our main flight, anywhere from 9:30, 10:30.

They've been in here pretty consistently.

We've been excited for this hunt and hope it turns out.

This year, bird numbers have been good.

I mean, between the consistent rains, unlike we had last year, last year when we had that drought, a lot of those younger birds just didn't make it because so much of those little holes are drying up.

But with consistent rains we've had this summer, bird numbers are good.

We've been seeing 100 here, 200 here, 250 here, and that's all within a 10 square mile radius.

And on the smaller ponds, you've got smaller populations.

It's been good for September, it's been better.

(geese honking) (guns popping) - [Jimmy] After about three hours in the blind without seeing a single goose, we finally had some birds show up, and once they did, things happened fast.

- Well, we waited and we waited and we waited, but it's time for the loaf.

We just had a beautiful, probably 10 pack land in.

The guys cut into him.

We've got seven, eight birds down in the process of the dog bringing back.

We had another flock fly over, but they saw the dog coming up in, so they didn't want to come in.

He was coming up in and had another single drop in.

We just got him, so it's time for the loaf to start.

Let's kick it off good.

(geese honking) (guns popping) - Morning started off slow.

There was no birds until about 9:30, and we started seeing birds come to loaf and dropped about 10 out of one flock and six or seven out of the other.

I think we're up to around 22.

So it's a good morning.

Hopefully another flock or two comes in here and we can finish it off.

- How many birds do you think we've seen so far?

- We've seen maybe 50, 60 birds all day.

Usually there's about 200 to 300 in here, so pretty optimistic we'll get another group in here.

- [Jimmy] Lots of birds means lots of retrieves and having a good dog on hand makes hunting over water a lot easier.

- We got Chance here.

He's a year and nine months.

He's been doing phenomenal for us.

We never expected him to just do as good as he has, but he's done 16 retrieves today.

I'm working on my casting.

It's a slow and irritating process, but I'm failing him, not me.

He's always good at learning and he works hard, so we love bringing him out on the hunts.

He makes the hunts a lot better, for sure.

(guns popping) Well, I really like those water hunts because it seems to be more of a steady trickle in.

There is that portion of waiting when you're hunting a loaf like this.

We sat for, like you said, four hours, three hours just sitting there kind of starting to second guess things.

But when it happens, it happens quick and it's very consistent.

The birds, they want to be right where they want to be.

Hunting a field, you're gonna get that action right in the morning.

Say a roost gets up, you might have 150 birds in your face at once, and that's fun and all, but we prefer the trickle of the fives, the 10s, the 20s, because you just seem to get much better shooting, much better numbers, and then you can get out quicker.

And then having the dog, obviously, you got to have a dog for the water.

And if it wasn't for him, I don't think half of what we did today would have been possible.

- We just wrapped up here.

We had two groups come in and we dropped the last 13, 12 of them.

So we're just picking up all the dead birds out here and we finished up our limit, so it's a good day.

- Turned around pretty quick.

- Oh yeah.

As soon as it hit 11 o'clock, it was go time.

- [Jimmy] A seven man limit of geese, most of which came within the last half of an hour.

It's amazing just how fast things can turn around.

Obviously, not every hunt goes this well, but there's a takeaway from every hunt that can help you become a better waterfowler.

- If you're gonna get into waterfowling, you know, the biggest thing I'll say is treat the land with respect, respect the landowners, never lie, and stay within the legal boundaries and limits, and then the rest is history.

I mean, if you're an honest individual, you clean up after yourself and you take care of the birds that are taking care of you, I think it just, the trickle effect will keep going down and you'll eventually be able to become a good waterfowler.

Take the hunts that you shoot two or three and just learn something on it.

Don't not appreciate two or three birds because, you know, you took their life and put them to use, and if you can't use them, you know, make them into some jerky or some snack sticks and give them to your landowners.

That's one of our favorite things to do because we do get quite a bit of birds every year, but we make sure every one of them gets cleaned.

- [Jimmy] These guys love to waterfowl hunt and have recently turned that passion into a business that involves hunting, lodging and more.

Special thanks to Wyatt and the crew for letting me tag along on a fun day here in Southern Michigan.

(upbeat music) Well, hey everybody, thank you so much for watching Michigan Out-of-Doors this week.

Get out and enjoy everything our state has to offer, and if we don't see you in the woods or on the water, hopefully we'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

- [Jenny] Michigan Out-of-Doors is presented by.

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To learn more about all the product options available for your food plots, visit dairydoo.com.

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By GreenMark Equipment.

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(upbeat music) ♪ When I wander far away ♪ A dream stays with me night and day ♪ ♪ It's the road that leads to my home state ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ Changing seasons paint the scene ♪ ♪ Like rainbow trout on a hidden stream ♪ ♪ Whitetail deer in the tall pine trees ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ I am I am a Michigan man ♪ That's where I'm from ♪ And I'll show you my hands (gentle music)