150+ runs, loads of bigguns, best fishing trip of my life!!!

Hello All,
It has been a while since I have had a good story to post up and after this past weekend I hope you enjoy the read and pics of my experience from the past 3 days.

The Story starts from a simple phone call from fellow Michigan Member Don early last week. During the conversation Don mentioned he was thinking about spending the weekend fishing the Saginaw River (my Favorite fishery). A lot has happened in my life these past 8 months which has kept me extremely busy and stressed out and has limited my fishing down to once or twice a month, so after getting off the phone with Don the bug had set in and set in hard it did. All I could think about was fishing for a 2 or 3 day session which is something I have never done before and thinking of the future, something that will likely never happen for at least another year so I started planning.

The forcast for the weekend should have detered me from my trip as major thunderstorms, high winds, very low drop in temps and a late spring all should have factored into me staying home. I usually start fishing the Saginaw river in late May/early June as earlier experiences were never all that productive.

So, my thinking was I would find a new spot on the river closer to the Bay (Saginaw Bay..part of Lake Huron). I honestly knew nothing about fishing the river or what spots I would find that far down.

The Preparation for the trip seemed to last forever and finally on Thursday night I had the truck loaded and ready for my early morning escape to my adventure.

I awoke at 4am and left by 5am Friday. I arrived at my original spot on the river and scoped it out at around 6:25am. Absolutely nothing was moving…Dang, well stick to the game plan and keep heading closer to the bay. A few more stops farther down with the same results..got dang!! Keep driving I did and finally I found what looked to be the perfect new swim so I hopped out of the truck and grabbed my rod. The location was perfect looking but I needed to test the water for snags and water depth. After a few casts and whatnot I was confident this is where I was going to set up. As I turned my back I heard the sweet sound of a fish crashing That is all I needed to light a fire under my arse to get setup.

After an hour of setting up the bivvy, base camp and preparing some method mixes I started the tedious chumming process.

20 minutes after I got my rods in the water I got my first run and boy was I was overly excited. A scrapper 7 lber was landed and on the release my other rod went off…another little fella.

The Haul fest began and before Don arrived at 1pm I had already banked a couple 20’s and loads of others.

After the introduction of Don’s stepson Brett they were soon set-up and they joined in on the fishing action.

Don made us up potatoes and fresh fish fillets for dinner thank you sir!!! much better than what I had packed along

After dinner the rains would start and the winds picked up drawing a bit of a lull in the action and then a Ginormous Barge made its way slowly down the river churning the bottom and turning the river into a muddy mess. It caused a dead stop in the action for a couple hours and we decided to switch to big baits for the night and settle down for some sleep. The last run came at around 9:20PM ending my day total at 30 runs. Not sure How many Don and Brett had, but somewhere around the 15 mark.

At 2:20 in the morning I was awoke with a screaming run and after that no sleep for the whole rest of the day Sat 14 fish from 2:20-6am. After some fried up ham and cheese sandwhiches The Haul fest continued and multiple 20’s were banked along with loads of teens and little scrappers. Little Brett would catch the biggest of the day at 25 lbs 4 oz :yourock: I ended the day with 39 runs and Don and Brett had at leat 20

Alex arrived right before Nightfall and setup base his base camp in the dark right before the storms started, soon after he was into the fish as well.

The weather was crappy for the majority of the day and by nightfall the temps dropped to 40 with high winds and blowing cold rain…uggg it was the worst cold I attemted to sleep in in my life. I was so cold that after the first run at 12am I pulled my rods and went back to wrapping my blanket around my head to try and keep warm.

At around 5 am I awoke frozen and went about to get my rods back in the water and soon after the runs began again. The weather was really cold but the rains had stopped and with the action I started to warm up. At around 6am Don and Brett awoke, baited up and were soon into fish.

We had Don try out a new Grit recipe with a Triple B flavor and his next 3 fish were Quality…a 25+,23+ and a 21+. Those grits did him proud and he continued to haul em in

At around 2ish Don would pack up and head home and as I was giving him some ready made grit packages I heard my rod go screaming off so afted a hurried goodbye I ran to my rod and lifted into my biggest fish of the session which gave me a fantastic lengthy fight…whoo hoo, my biggest of the year so far I ended my day with 33 runs hitting my 100 runs Goal for the trip at 102.

I want to thank Don and Brett for the comradery and food, it all boiled down to the best fishing experience of my life. Thank You!!

Many baits were tested out, including Peanut Butter Boilies, Artificials, Aarons Dough Baits, different Bread Packs, Grit packs, SCM, Triple B Flavor, Anise Flavoring, 45-50mm Donkey Chokers all with excellent results.

First up are a couple pics of big Dons fish and Bretts 25lb 4 ozer.

Next up are some pics of the mirrors.

 

A few of the 20’s

   

And my biggest of the trip at nearly 30lb and over 37 inches.