- Hello everyone.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

We're so glad you're here this week.

I'm Jenny Ciolek and we've got a great show headed your way.

Recently, there was a walleye tournament out of Au Gres put on by some great folks, and Jordan was able to spend the day tagging along on that tournament.

You won't wanna miss that story, and we've got some other great things headed your way this week too.

- Well, that's right.

We do have a few more stories on this week's show.

We're actually gonna kick things off in Lake Michigan out of the Port of Muskegon.

Gonna tag along with some fishermen there.

And then we're gonna head to the Upper Peninsula and visit with a deer hunter who is really involved in the Deer Management Initiative and now the Deer Advisory Team up there.

So, lots of good information about deer hunting in general, but specifically the Upper Peninsula.

Lots of brand new stuff on this week's show.

You stay tuned.

I'm Jimmy Gretzinger.

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

(leaves rustling) ♪ 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 ♪ - [Hunter] What a beautiful day in the woods.

♪ Some day our children all will see ♪ ♪ This is their finest legacy ♪ ♪ Wander 'round the love of Michigan ♪ ♪ As the wind comes whispering through the trees ♪ (duck quacking) ♪ 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 ♪ - [Announcer] "Michigan Out Of Doors" is presented by.

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(dramatic music) (gentle music) (fishermen chattering) - [Jeremy] All right guys, well, I'm Jeremy.

I'm gonna be your first mate today, so.

(engine roaring) (gentle music) (reel whirring) - You're just gonna let him run, eh?

- Good size though.

- Yeah.

- Because this stainless steel wire and it's zero stretch to it.

- That's a good thing.

- It's running.

You don't wanna do anything fast, it's all fluid.

- [Fisherman] Okay.

- [Jeremy] So far that fish is winning.

- That's a nice fish.

- So, so far we've got what?

One, two, three, four, five rods in only.

We took a bite immediately on a Dipsy Diver down about 200 feet or out 200 feet.

I think this is the meat rig, so we'll see what happens.

- How far out is this one?

- Currently?

- 280.

- Yep.

Currently we're at 283, 281.

We got a ways to go.

(laughs) Well, we got our best guy on the rod here.

- One with the most experience.

Put it that way.

- Yes.

The gray hairs gives it away.

- [Narrator] I found out about this fishing trip just a few days before it happened.

A good friend told me that they were taking two boats out of Muskegon with guys from out of state and there was an open spot.

So I tagged along with camera in hand.

We didn't even have all the lines in the water and we had a big king on the way in.

- I just can't get him up.

- You're all right.

He's coming.

He's coming.

He's coming.

(water splashing) - Nice big frigging fish.

(fishermen chattering) - Yeah, boys!

Yeah, boys!

Good job.

Good job.

- Congratulations.

- Wow.

- He's in the boat.

- Wow.

- He's in the boat.

- It's in the net.

- Yep.

- [Fisherman] You'll feel better when he's in the boat.

- Nice job, young man.

- Young man?

(laughs) Yeah.

Salmon number one in my lifetime.

- [Jeremy] That's the first one ever, right?

- First one ever.

- Well, you did a good job.

Congratulations.

- That's kinda like the guy that goes deer hunting and gets a 12 pointer right away.

(group laughing) - Alright, watch it guys.

- That's a big fish.

- Outstanding.

- That's a big boy.

- That's a tank, guys.

- Woo!

That's a nice one.

- [Narrator] These guys were all here as part of a trip put on by Sky Quest Ministries, and so while we had a minute, Rodd told me about how this trip of guys from Iowa and Minnesota got here to Michigan.

- We got Sky Quest Outdoor Ministries.

We are, our purpose as a ministry is to reach people with the gospel using hunting and fishing.

We have been around for about 15 years.

We've only done primarily turkey hunts and we thought, well, let's expand and try some different things.

So that's why we're here.

Salmon fishing is something that a lot of guys don't get a chance to do, so it's another opportunity for them to do it.

- [Interviewer] What brought you to Michigan?

- Seth and Jack are from here.

- Okay.

- [Rodd] Seth and Jack McCullough and they are who started Sky Quest Outdoor Ministries.

And we've been friends ever since.

I've been helping with the turkey hunts ever since it started and then, yeah, that's why we're here.

- [Narrator] It is fun for me as we travel from port to port around the state to get to know charter boat guys from all over.

And I had fished out of Muskegon many times, but not with Captain Kyle Buck.

He has been doing this a long time and says the fishing right now, well, it's just picking up here on the west side.

- Oh, it's been pretty decent.

But the kings just showed up not too long ago, maybe a week and a half ago in Muskegon area anyway.

And before that the trout fishing was real good for a few weeks.

The biggest one we've caught this year is probably 26 pounds king.

Okay, that's a really nice one we got today.

Seems to be a lot of meat bites and flashers and spinning some flies.

We basically go off water currents, temperature, so, you know, the water will get pushed around a lot and we find those current breaks.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- [Narrator] Being a Michigander, well, we can sometimes take the unbelievable fishing we have on the Great Lakes for granted.

So to see this kind of fishing through the eyes of fishermen from other parts of the country, well, it is pretty cool and a good reminder to us all.

- [Interviewer] What do you Iowa guys think of this big lake fishing?

- Oh, love it.

- It's all right.

- Love it.

- This is alright.

Yes, it is.

- Can get used to this.

- [Interviewer] What kind of fishing do you back home?

- Walleye, crappie, and bass.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- Some muskie.

- Some catfish.

- Yep, yep.

- [Interviewer] Is this your first time on Lake Michigan?

- Yes.

- Yep.

Absolutely.

- First time.

Won't be the last.

- [Narrator] We had steady action all morning.

I had a chance to ask Kyle how he got into fishing and what he likes about taking folks out on the water.

- [Kyle] Well, my dad started me out fishing when I was, could barely walk and just took me a lot and just, I fell in love with it and decided to make a career out of it.

Truthfully, I didn't really like big lake fishing that much when I was a kid.

I was more into rod and hand bass fishing, walleye fishing.

My favorite thing is watching little kids reel in fish or people that have never done it, catch their first fish or somebody catch their biggest fish they've ever caught.

That's, I'd much rather see somebody else catch fish than myself.

- Yeah, it's in!

- All right, great job.

Oh god, boys!

- Woo!

- [Kyle] We might have made the 30 club on that one.

- That's gonna be awful big.

- I don't think he's that, but he's heavy.

- [Narrator] We had two big kings today in the mid 20 pound range.

Two really nice coho, a few steelhead as well.

It was a great box of fish.

And the other boat out today did pretty good as well.

It was cool to see a group of guys from around the country with a great cause using fishing as a way to connect.

We are certainly fortunate here in Michigan with lots of opportunities in the outdoors.

So whether you get out on the water every day or it's been a while, one thing is true.

Spending time with friends and family on the water is a blessing for sure.

Here in Michigan's out of doors.

- For our next segment on this week's show, I was over on the east side of the state to cover a really cool walleye fishing tournament that puts a big emphasis on getting more kids into the outdoors.

(engine rumbling) (bluesy country music) For this week's show, I was in Au Gres to cover the annual Summer Smash Walleye Tournament hosted by the Saginaw Bay Walleye Club.

For this tournament, I'd be tagging along with an angler and his two grandsons, hoping to find a few walleye.

What's the beat?

- We're gonna go out in between the green, the green barrels out there floating and we're gonna troll in between 'em and the water column and we're gonna get a lot of fish.

That's the game plan.

(Tom laughs) - Yeah, unless it's too windy.

Unless it's too windy.

You got your Dramamine?

- Uh, no.

- Oh, great.

You're okay though?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, he's good.

He's okay.

(gentle music) (engine roaring) - [Narrator] After a short boat ride, we were able to get set up and before long we had our first fish on the line.

- It's coming in.

- You wanna see?

- Yeah, it's coming fast.

- Easy trigger, easy.

- Whoa, don't pump it.

- Don't pump it.

- [Finley] You're gonna snap it off.

I think you have a walleye.

- [Keene] Yeah, this is.

Yeah, this is a walleye.

Whoa.

- [Finley] Walleye are notoriously easy to fight.

- Unless they're- - [Finley] Unless they're really, really, really big.

- Six feet long.

- Six feet?

Whoa.

- His head's there.

- [Finley] Don't get ahead of yourself.

- Walleye definitely.

- [Finley] Oh, it's a walleye.

- Holy moly!

- It's a nice one.

- Look at the size of that one!

- That's a nice one.

- Woo-hoo!

Whoa.

Look at the size of that, bro.

Good job.

Where's our wires here?

- [Keene] I'm always the one who gets the most- - [Narrator] This tournament is put on by the Saginaw Bay Walleye Club and although it's geared towards getting more kids out on the water, it's structured similar to a normal tournament.

- So today we're in Au Gres, Michigan.

We're running the 2025 Saginaw Bay Walleye Club Summer Smash Tournament.

It's a fun, family friendly tournament that we bring to Au Gres.

At the Summer Smash Tournament we do it a little bit different than the Michigan Walleye tour.

We have a captain's meeting on Friday.

They're allowed up to four people in the boat on this tour, but they can only use six rods in the Summer Smash.

So they come here, the first flight is at seven o'clock in the morning.

They take off, the first flight has to be back in at three o'clock in the afternoon.

They can bring in five fish to the weigh-in and they have to be 15 inches long to weigh the fish in.

The second flight comes in 3:45 and they will follow the same thing and go across the stage and see how they do at the end of the day.

(water splashing) - Well, we came out here, we had high hopes it's gonna be sunny and very calm and we had two to three footers.

We're out near the Charity Islands for an hour and a half, two hours.

Caught one real nice one and hopefully we'll have five for our bag.

We moved in because of the wind in part and we've caught a couple smaller ones in here close.

But it's been a good day, huh?

- It's been all right.

- Yep.

- It hasn't been on fire, but it's been fun.

- Get the bucket.

- Yeah.

(reel whirring) - [Finley] Right here, it's a nice one.

- Oh, it's a nice one.

- Yes!

- Yeah, baby.

Woo-hoo.

- What's the damage?

- It's been all right, but, oh, not the best.

Sometimes, sometimes days are just like that.

You can't change it.

- [Narrator] After a full day of fishing, each team heads back to the launch to weigh their fish in and to get an opportunity to walk across the stage and talk about their day, something most of the kids thoroughly enjoy.

- Hey, today we're up in Au Gres, Michigan on a beautiful lake here and we are here with the Saginaw Bay Walleye Club for the 2025 version of the Summer Smash.

You know, fishing is an opportunity to get together with your family, enjoy friends and family, get on the boat, pass on traditions, and have a great time.

And that's what this is all about.

Getting the young kids out, getting them excited about fishing and introducing them to the excitement of tournament fishing.

All of us enjoyed fishing with our dads, our grandpas, our uncles, and that's what this Summer Smash is all about.

The Saginaw Bay Wall Club does a great job of keeping families involved.

Can't wait to see what happens here and how all the young kids come in and how excited they are to be part of this year's Summer Smash.

All right, 20.11.

I do like the fact you're learning to kind of exaggerate a little bit.

That's always important.

Who'd you learn that from?

I figured as much, right?

We started this tournament four years ago just as a friendly tournament to get back into Au Gres, and we have seen people bring more and more kids into this sport.

They're finally coming out, they're getting their kids away from video games, they're coming out and having a great day on the water.

It's beautiful here in Au Gres today.

We know the kids are gonna go out, have a ball, and we have seen this grow over the last four years, very big.

We have 77 boats in this tournament and over half of them have kids on board.

- [Narrator] All in all, the fishing was pretty good for this tournament with the winning bag weighing in at just over 24 pounds.

Our boat ended up in the middle of the pack with just over 16 pounds.

Special thanks to Tom and the crew for letting me tag along and to all of the volunteers that make this event possible.

It was a great day here in Au Gres.

(upbeat music) - Well, it's hard to believe that deer season is really not that far away here in the great state of Michigan.

And on a recent trip to the Upper Peninsula, we sat down with Jordan Hoover to get some information about deer hunting in the Upper Peninsula.

He was part of the Deer Management Initiative up there in the Upper Peninsula and he's now part of the deer advisory team that's working with the DNR to get some more information from hunters and concerned sportsmen like many of you are.

So we were able to sit down and learn a little bit more about what's going on with the deer herd and the deer population in the Upper Peninsula.

(gentle music) All right, well we are here still in the Upper Peninsula for a couple more days and we're able to track down Jordan Hoover.

Jordan, you were on the show, I dunno, maybe a year or so ago, talking about the DMI, the Deer Management Initiative.

Let's just start with that.

Is that still going?

And what is the status of that group?

Kind of why did they form you guys and how long did you work on that?

- Well, thanks for having me on again, Jimmy.

It's been a while, like you said, probably about a year since we sat down on the shores of the Eastern UP over there, the DMI actually concluded at the end of last reg cycle.

- Okay.

- So that was conducted under the purview of the Natural Resources Commission and we were advising them directly at that time and that sunsetted at the end of last year.

But myself and some other members of both Peninsula DATs felt that there was a lot of value in the work that we'd done.

And all the time the department spent on educating us on the biological nuts and bolts and the science.

And we asked that they would continue it.

There's precedent that before us they had what was called RDAT, the Regional Deer Advisory Team.

Of course there was us and there's reason to believe that there's need for that in the future with the whitetail deer being the flagship species for the state of Michigan.

And the DNR agreed with that and they saw value and they picked up the ball.

So we kind of had a little bit of a rebrand, Jimmy, and now we're called the DAT or Deer Advisory Team.

And we advise the department directly instead of the Natural Resources Commission.

But you know, a lot of the staff from both teams carried over.

So it's probably 95% a lot of the same folks that served on the DMI.

- Okay, and how often do you guys get together to advise the departments?

Is that once a month, once every six months?

How does that work?

- So right now we're kind of on a summer break.

We finished up our work for the 2025 Reg Cycle in mid-March when the DNR crafted a wildlife conservation order and submitted that to the commission.

New regs were approved in June, so we're kind of taking a quick breath right now before we put our shoulder to the wheel again at the end of August.

And at that time we'll probably meet about once a month until December, January, and then we'll start doubling up meeting twice a month as we get closer to the finish line.

- Okay, and we're sitting here beginning of summer, so we just got through the spring.

How was the winter and spring for the deer population in the Upper Peninsula from your perspective?

How did we do this winter?

- Well, you know, that's always a tricky question because the UP has such tremendous diversity all year long and that includes winter, you know, there's spots where they got pounded and there's spots where winter was more merciful.

But I would say if I had to give a general overview, I think that we had a longer, slower start to winter than is typically the case.

And although we did get some good snow accumulation later on, I think that the slow start offset that and it looks to me like we're in pretty good shape going into this fall.

- Okay, and I know there was some changes to the deregulations for the Upper Peninsula.

Kinda walk me through what those are and kind of your thoughts on were they good, were they bad?

Kind of what's your thoughts on that?

- Well, I tell you what, Jimmy, 2025 was massively positive for the UP Deer Advisory Team.

And we needed it coming off of the fiasco that we went through with the DMI in 2024.

I think the team as a whole was really hungry for a win and we needed to get something done that was gonna have a positive impact for the UP.

And we were able to do that in 2025.

And myself and a lot of other members of our team were pretty excited.

So one of the first things that happened, and this affects both the UP and LP.

- Okay.

- You may recall that the Liberty and Independence hunts last year, there was a proposal that came out of the commission to make them antler-less only.

- Yep.

- And that obviously ruffled a lot of feathers and was a contentious issue, but that was reversed.

So for 2026, the Liberty and Independence hunts will retain the opportunity to harvest an antler buck or a doe if they so choose.

So that was change number one.

Number two was some folks may not have remembered this from last year, but for the UP late archery season, which used to end January 1st was rolled back to December 10th.

And kind of the ideology there was a test bed to see if protecting those late season deer during migration had a statistical impact that mattered.

And everything that we saw, it didn't.

So the commission chose to restore late archery season back to January 1st, not seeing a biological impact.

So there is restored or expanded, however you want to couch it, opportunity for late archery season.

- Okay.

- Number three, and this was a big one and it was a heavy lift for our team and there was some measure of division within the ranks about it, as you can imagine.

For the first time in 10 years, archers will now have the opportunity to harvest a doe with a bow during archery season.

- Okay.

- And that can be on a combination license on either the three point or the four point restricted tag, or it can be on a standard deer license as well.

- Okay, so you felt these new changes are good?

Are they kinda, how's that going over up here?

- Well, there's one more change, Jimmy, I wanted to touch on, and this was another initiative that came from the commission and Commissioner John Walters is the one that brought it to the table.

He proposed to work with the department and establish an educational component to be installed into our hunter safety programs that will bring attention to the necessity of antler-less harvest and the scientific basis for balancing sex ratios.

And that's a critical issue because if you look down the ledger, the LP and the UP had the same issue when it comes to sex ratios for different reasons, but nonetheless the same problem.

And the commission felt that there was, there was an educational aspect that was missing and they wanted to work with the department to establish that.

So I think that's a good thing as well.

On the whole, yeah, I'm excited about the changes.

I think they're good things.

And as always, anything with deer management, Jimmy, you put 10 hunters in a room, you're gonna get 12 opinions and there's passion on both sides.

We need to bring balance back to the herd and this is the most conservative method we have of doing that.

And the great thing is, Jimmy, people say, well, on what basis?

We have 50 years of precedent.

Prior to 2015, the archery doe tag was issued for 50 years.

And I think there's a lot of folks that would probably tell you our herd was in better shape back then.

- Wow.

Well, cool.

Well, appreciate your time and you know, as we move forward, does it feel like it's a start of a new era up here as far as doe with the bow or just kind of changing some mindsets a little bit, or?

- You know, Jimmy, I think it's fair to say that we're in the midst of a transition and you know, I certainly don't want to cast any shade on those who have spent many, many years, decades of their time doing good things for the UP and specifically the whitetail deer.

But at some point, every young lion becomes an old lion and the new generation steps forward and assumes leadership.

And I think that we're seeing that and we're seeing a good crop of young UP leaders stepping up and taking responsibility and becoming stewards of this land.

- Perfect.

Thank you sir.

- Thank you, Jimmy.

Appreciate it.

(gentle music) - Thanks so much for joining us this week for "Michigan Out of Doors."

Make sure you come back in upcoming weeks, lots of great things headed your way, of course some more summertime fishing, and we'll give you some more food plot tips and deer habitat information.

If you'd like to see where we are and what we're up to, online is a great way to do that.

- Well, that's right.

Online is a good way to kind of keep track of us.

You can do that through our website at michiganoutofdoorstv.com, full episodes of the show there, recipes, all sorts of stuff to look at.

And you can check out some of our new merchandise as well.

And if we don't see you in the woods or in the water, hopefully we'll see you right back here next week on your PBS station.

- [Announcer] "Michigan Out of Doors" is presented by.

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Closed captioning brought to you by Double D Ranch Foundation, a nonprofit 501C3 foundation, working to make hunting and fishing accessible for those with disabilities.

(light music) (gentle music)