- Hello, everyone.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors."

I'm Jenny Ciolek, and we've got a brand new show headed your way.

This week I'm here on the Detroit River, and I spent the day with a couple of 14-year-old boys who really know their stuff when it comes to walleye fishing down here.

You won't wanna miss that story.

And Jimmy and Jordan have some other adventures in store for us this week.

- Well, that's right, Jenny.

We do have another story on this week's show.

We were hoping to bring you some turkey hunting on this week's show, but that's going a little slower than we'd like.

So we're gonna head to Northern Michigan and sit down with a sportsman who does a lot of scouting on state land this time of the year for deer and show you what you can be doing to get ready for the upcoming deer seasons this fall.

Lots of good stuff on this week's show, so 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 - [Speaker] 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 ♪ - [Announcer] "Michigan Out of Doors" is presented by Country Smokehouse, a sportsman's destination since 1988, featuring varieties of homemade sausage, jerky, brats, and gourmet entrees.

Holiday gift boxes can be assembled in store or online.

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- [Narrator] There's a shift in the air, the quiet hunt for spring sheds, that first open watered cast.

Whether you're chasing turkeys or waiting for that first walleye strike, we know the feeling.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - So today we're gonna do a little show out here on the Detroit River outta Sindbad's with a couple young guys, Brady and Preston, that are up and coming fishermen and they're both first mate on different boats.

Brady actually fishes with my partner Adam, and Preston fishes with a gentleman down here on the Detroit River.

I actually met Preston through one of our shows.

We did a show here, I don't know, six or seven years ago, and he watched it a bunch of times, and happened to meet him down here at Sindbad's.

So we got a couple young kids we're gonna come out and do a show.

My big thing about this was that young kids, there's a lot of good young kids out there that are doing a lot of good things, and these two are some of those kids.

So that's why we're bringing 'em out here and we're gonna do a show and have some fun.

- [Speaker] And what's your game plan for the river?

- [Mark] To try to catch some fish.

(laughing) - [Speaker] What's the year been like so far down here in Detroit?

- It's been very hit or miss early because we had a lot of cold weather early, so it was kind of a later start.

We'd have some good days and then it'd get really cold and shut the fish down.

And so the key's been warmer weather, a little warmer weather, and we've had some really good days though.

We've got a lot of 30-fish days and 40-fish days.

So yesterday we did pretty well with some nice fish.

We caught a six-and-a-half pounder yesterday, so that was a good fish.

So that's kind of where we're gonna start today and see what we can do for the rest of the day.

- [Speaker] Okay.

Do you have to teach these guys how to jig?

- [Mark] I won't have to do anything.

That's the best part of this trip today is these guys have fished here long enough, even though they're younger, they both fished here a lot and have caught a lot of fish.

So hopefully one of 'em hooks up with a 12-pounder today and we'll see what happens.

- [Speaker] So Brady, how long have you been fishing?

- Ever since I could walk pretty much.

Started at a young age bass fishing and then fell in love with it.

- [Speaker] Who taught you how to fish?

- My grandpa and my dad.

- [Speaker] Okay, what do you like about it?

- Everything.

Catch a bunch of big fish.

It's fun to reel 'em in.

I just have a good time.

- [Speaker] And so you're working as a first mate?

- Yep.

For Adam.

- [Speaker] How long have you been doing that?

- I started last summer.

- Okay.

And how much are you working in the summers?

- [Brady] Quite a bit.

Try to work every other day if I can.

- [Speaker] Nice.

What do you like about walleye fishing?

- They're fun fighting fish and they taste good.

- [Speaker] (laughing) All right.

So where's your favorite place to fish?

- Probably the Saginaw Bay, trolling, catch a lot.

- [Narrator] It was already shaping up to be a great morning with beautiful weather.

We were fishing next to Peach Island here in the river and we're a bit distracted by a nice gobbler on shore who came out to the beach to check things out.

(turkey gobbling) As we motored back upstream for another drift, we got a good look at that nice long beard.

Just like Brady, Preston has been fishing for most of his life and we're proud to say "Michigan Out of Doors" had a part in that.

- So my dad booked us a charter, I think I was about eight years old, and "Michigan Out of Doors" uploaded a show about jigging the river and I was so excited.

I watched the same show five times a day for probably a month before it.

And while our captain was cleaning fish, Mark rolled in the marina and I knew him from watching the show so many times.

I was super excited.

Went up and said hi.

Now since we've stayed in contact, and that's how we are here today.

- [Speaker] Awesome.

- You hit it super far out.

- [Speaker] So Preston, what do you like about doing this type of fishing?

- [Preston] They're very fun fish to catch and amazing eating.

- [Speaker] Good job, Preston.

So what would you say is the most important thing to know or a couple tips to know about jigging here if you've never done it?

- Just make sure you're maintaining bottom contact and don't let it sit on the bottom too long or else you'll snag.

Just figure out how they want it each day.

- So we're looking at trying to get some bigger fish right now, so it's a little slower jig because the bigger fish don't usually like a real fast pace.

So it's just, I lift up maybe six or eight inches, tap the bottom and just keep tapping the bottom with straight line, no slack in the line until we hit bottom.

If we're doing male runs down the middle in 40 feet, or whatever, then I'm a lot more aggressive because those fish are more aggressive.

So the bigger fish here that we're trying to catch right now, it's a little slower jig, just a quick lift and drop down, maybe six or eight inches to try to keep it in the strike zone.

That's the whole key down here on this river is not to jig high, is to keep it low and not go over the fish.

So that's the whole key down here on the Detroit River is keeping that jig low to the ground and just a little hopping, kind of like bouncing the ball down the river.

- [Speaker] How did that one hit?

- He hit it right on the bottom.

He sucked it right down to the bottom.

- [Mark] Pinned it down.

- [Narrator] The guys were picking away at the bigger fish on this short drift next to Peach Island.

Captain Mark says there's a common mistake walleye anglers make on the river here.

- So one of the biggest things out here in the morning is a lot of guys will come out and make a couple passes through an area and they leave.

In this place here, a couple degrees, like the sun's come out, take my coat off, it's got a lot warmer and the fish are starting to go.

Our first pass, we didn't catch a fish.

They were down there, but we didn't catch any.

And now they're starting to heat up a little bit.

The water temperature's starting to rise a little bit with the sun coming out, and we've caught three fish this pass whereas the first pass was nothing.

A lot of people leave when they should stick it out.

We know there's fish here, so we're gonna kind of grind it out a little bit and they may snap and turn on with this heat.

If they do, it's a bonus for us.

- [Speaker] Brady, you're too busy netting everyone's fish.

- Yeah.

- [Speaker] That's a nice one.

Nice work, Preston.

- Thank you.

- [Speaker] How many we have in there you think?

- [Preston] One, two, three, four, five, six.

- We made a couple passes here by Peach.

We caught eight fish, something like that.

Missed a bunch and now we're gonna run to another spot.

It's a beautiful day.

Can't get any better than this.

The Detroit River doesn't look like this very often, I can tell you that.

So we're gonna take advantage of the day and go to another spot and try for some more fish.

You know, I told you this before, I think it's just great to have young guys on a boat.

I really enjoy having young people on a boat.

I think it keeps me young as a 66-year-old guy.

I'm not really introducing these guys to fishing, 'cause they've been fishing enough, but just to get young people in the outdoors.

I think it's very important to grow the sport and especially to get young people out fishing.

I think it's a tremendous thing for 'em because all of us old people complain about the kids just being on their phones all the time and kids not being good.

And these two guys are great young guys and they're both looking to get their captain's license in the future, which I think is phenomenal.

And I think they're both gonna be good at it.

They're both good fishermen.

They hustle on the net, they're just great kids.

So these kids are outdoors kids.

And I just wanted to be able to show people that there are a lot of good kids out there, even though a lot of people don't think so.

So that's why I wanted to do this trip with you and get these kids out here.

In a couple years they'll be out here and doing their own stuff.

So it's exciting to me.

I'm probably more excited than they are to get 'em out here, to be honest with you.

- [Narrator] Both of these guys love walleye fishing, but Preston is also making a name for himself in the bass fishing world through his school.

- [Preston] It's B.A.S.S.

Nation.

I'm going into the high school this year.

I fished the juniors the past two years.

I finished second place Angler of the Year my first year, and first place in the past season.

And then this year I'm starting to fish more tournaments all over the state.

I got my state championship for my BFA on May 31st on Lake Charlevoix.

- [Speaker] Well, good luck with that.

That's exciting.

- [Preston] Yeah.

- [Narrator] what a great end to a fantastic day on the Detroit River.

Captain Mark and the boys caught their limits.

Brady and Preston are both considerate, polite, smart young men who are fun to fish with and really know their stuff on the water.

With kids like them, our future looks bright here in "Michigan's Out of Doors."

- In this next story, Jordan Brown was able to sit down with a guy that hunts Northern Michigan and primarily on state land.

And we're gonna show you what you can do this time of year to be getting ready for the upcoming deer seasons.

(light acoustic guitar music) - So it's springtime in Northern Michigan, which we are all well deserving of.

It's maybe a little bit later in the season than what I'd like to get started to do our spring scouting for white-tailed deer hunting.

But we had over 30 inches of snow in March, and the snow just kind of went out.

It's finally, we're really grateful today, 65 degrees and sunny.

There's a lot of reasons to be in the woods in the spring in Michigan.

Lots of things to do, but my favorite thing to do is to set myself up for the fall that's coming for deer season.

And we do a lot of work in the spring as far as scouting and setting up our hunting locations, and just generally putting together the overview of a plan that we're gonna utilize come October and November.

The value in doing spring scouting is that you can walk through all the bedding areas, you can trample all over everything, theoretically, without having a lasting negative impact.

In some instances you're looking for deer that are gonna be in areas in October and November that aren't even spending time there during the winter or now.

- [Narrator] There are several reasons why spring scouting is beneficial, but one of the main reasons is because last year's deer sign is so visible.

- Once the snow comes in, it kinda encapsulates everything and once the snow goes out, the woods look very much like they did peak November, peak rut, scrapes, rubs, licking branches, heavily ran trails.

Everything is really easy to identify, especially trails and tracks this time of year because there's typically a lot of moisture in the ground this time of year with it being spring.

Heavily used runs, and even looking at tracks to get a gauge on what size deer is in the area, it's one of the best times to do that versus summer and fall when soil is more dry and those tracks aren't as easy to read.

We're gonna go up and over this piece of topography right now.

We're getting into this higher stem count area.

I assume we're gonna start seeing some deer sign.

We did already found a nice signpost rub here when we walked in.

We're gonna get up and over here and maybe look for a location of a couple intersecting trails or an existing scrape and see if we can't showcase setting up a location.

Very blessed here in Michigan to have, I believe, we have more public land than any other state east of the Mississippi.

I don't know that everybody utilizes it to their full advantage as far as the deer hunting opportunity goes, but we certainly like to.

So we utilize a hybrid strategy of mobile hunting and essentially trapping.

We use scrapes and synthetic deer lures to set up essentially a trap.

And we could look at that as basically the center of our spider web.

And most of our setups we'll call it, are gonna revolve around really three things.

The tree that you're setting up in, the scrape that you're shooting to, and then typically a camera to monitor that location.

It's the ultimate freedom.

If you go to a spot and there aren't deer there, you have the flexibility to go to deer.

I think it's putting yourself in a defensive position to hunt deer sets you up to have a potentially higher failure rate because if the deer aren't there, the deer aren't there for whatever variety of reasons, but they're gonna be somewhere.

So if you have that versatility and that flexibility and that skill set to, as I say, I kinda like to take the fight to them, I like to figure out where the deer are gonna be and I like to get in and get set up within real close proximity.

- [Narrator] A good scrape set up is the foundation of Kevin's strategy, in part because it allows him to have an inventory of what bucks are in the area.

The more active scrape sites, the better the chance of finding a nice buck.

Not every spot pans out so it's important to have multiple locations.

And as we made our way through the timber, Kevin found a spot that he liked.

- So we've gotten to a location that we deem fit to invest a little bit of time here to set up a scrape location.

And so what we kind of have is a big point of topography coming together.

There's a little bit of a lower basin here and like a drainage here.

And sure enough, as soon as we got up here, it was littered with deer tracks, some of them fresh.

We may have just bumped some deer out of here, but they can bed right up on this point and they can surveil 360 degrees.

Nothing can really get up on top of 'em.

But in the morning, if you have a good entry plan and you get into a location like this, it can be some of the best rut hunts that you'll ever have.

If you can get into a bedding area early in the morning ahead of the deer coming in there, you could have a really action-packed day.

First thing I'm gonna do is just kind of walk around a little bit and I'm gonna figure out exactly where I need the scrape to be.

And when I do that, what I'm looking for is the location of the tree that I'm gonna sit in and then also where I could potentially set a camera up.

So I'm looking for three things and when I find that exact spot, I'll typically set my bag there and walk over to the tree, mark off the yardage, figure out exactly what I have goin on.

Then I'm gonna set up my camera, and then lastly, the last thing that I'm gonna do is set up the scrape itself.

We got the scrape location right behind the camera right now.

This is essentially how I would be positioned.

My bow will be right here, and I'm able to pull my bow off and shoot right this whole line of sight.

I can actually shoot all of this, this whole point that's coming through here.

But the scrape is gonna end up being about 15 yards from where we're set up here in this tree, on this location.

So not only on public land to avoid theft or any issues in that regard, I like to keep my cameras at about eight foot level.

It keeps 'em out of the peripheral vision and the direct contact of deer.

And I really notice an impact, especially with older age class deer.

If the camera is down to the level where they can touch their nose to it and contact it, it's just been my experience that that can be lead to a negative interaction and them not liking it.

So I like to conceal the camera a little better.

And by doing that, I'm about six to eight foot off the ground - [Narrator] With the stand and camera location set, it was time to make a mock scrape.

Kevin uses a synthetic deer lure that he created himself for this part of the process.

- This is our 16 ounce scrape kit.

It's got a eight ounce cylinder of urine and then eight ounce cylinder of branch catalyst.

We have a few different options for scent profiles on the website as well as an active scrape product and ingredient.

We developed this product essentially out of frustration from what was available on the synthetic market.

There's a number of reasons I prefer synthetics over an organic compound.

One, I know I'm gonna get the exact same material every single time.

Two, there's no spoilage.

So you can buy this product and it's not gonna go bad on you.

And then three, it's just when you weigh it out, ounces to ounces, it's a more affordable product to make, so for the end user, we can typically make a synthetic for about half the cost of what an organic lure is gonna cost.

And like I said, this isn't gonna go bad.

You're gonna get the exact same product every time and then if you see success with it, it's just a good thing to invest back in.

But a lot of fun at the end of the day and that's what makes the whole world go round and makes deer hunting enjoyable is making it fun.

Myself personally, I've shot a lot of younger bucks, a lot of two and a half year old nice deer.

Kind of graduated that over the last few years into shooting three and a half year olds.

And then at some point I said, I'm really, I've shot a few of these now I'm really interested in the four, five and older age class deer, which, they can be tough to come by and they can be hard to locate and you don't want to be spending time hunting theoretically a ghost.

So having a camera to monitor the location, to have a general idea of what deer in the area.

And as somebody that grew up a bait hunter in the state of Michigan, we always had a focus point.

Something that we were going to a location that we expected it to draw some deer.

And we can kind of cross that over a little bit to how we run our scrape locations and how we hunt them.

But the benefit is it doesn't alert the deer to human presence.

You're not going in there and replenishing a bait site.

And we evolved into this way of hunting like the really good locations once you get 'em up and running, I say a good scrape location is like a siphon.

Once you get it running, it should run itself.

(bow thudding) (laughing) Yes, yes, yes, yes.

You gotta love it, baby.

First day in November.

That's a great buck.

That's a smasher.

- [Narrator] There is a ton to do this time of year.

And whether you're chasing turkeys or fish, looking for mushrooms or scouting for deer, make sure to enjoy some time outside this spring here in "Michigan's Out of Doors."

(light acoustic guitar music) - Thank you so much for joining us this week for "Michigan Out of Doors."

Make sure you check us out in the upcoming weeks.

We've got a lot of great things headed your way, including some more turkey hunting and hopefully a UP Walleye Opener if the ice is off of the lake that we're trying to fish on.

If you'd like to see where we are and what we're up to, you can always check us out online.

- Well, that's right, Jenny.

Online is a good way to see what we're up to.

You can always check us out on our website, michiganoutofdoorstv.com or you can check us out at Instagram and Facebook.

Two good ways to see kind of what we're up to on a day-to-day basis.

There is a lot going on around our state, and for all you deer hunters out there, there is a lot of talk, as many of you know right now, about going to a one buck rule.

And that's gonna be decided this next month, May 13th in Gaylord, Michigan at the NRC meeting that's gonna be taking place there.

We will be there with cameras rolling to kinda capture that for you.

But if that's something you want to be at, make sure you mark your calendars.

May 13th, Gaylord, Michigan for the NRC meeting.

You can find out more information online at the DNR'S website if you wanna see kinda how that whole process works and how you can get signed up to make sure your voice is heard.

Thanks so much for watching "Michigan Out of doors" this week.

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

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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 child in a hidden stream ♪ ♪ Whitetail deer in the tall pine trees ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ I am, I am (gentle music)