Night Bite

Fri, May 9, 2008

MUSKEGON — The only sounds are the waves lapping at the hull of the boat, the wind blowing gently off Lake Michigan, and the obnoxious rumble of the huge dredging operation going on a few hundred yards away.

OK, so the growl of heavy machinery and the scent of diesel fuel takes away from some of the tranquility, but regardless, being out on the water well after midnight has a certain adventurous appeal, and it doesn't hurt that opportunities to fill a livewell with walleyes abounds.

The extent of my walleye fishing experience consists mainly of drifting down various stretches of the Grand River, bouncing a crawler-tipped jighead off the bottom, waiting for a subtle tapping that might suggest a finicky walleye on the other end.

Earlier this week, Ernest Miller of Last Chance Charters out of Fruitport, introduced me to a wildly different way to put walleyes in the boat.

Miller, 36, fishes several big-time walleye tournaments each year. He knows how to catch fish in almost any conditions, and his favorite method is trolling crawler harnesses. But in the early spring, before rivers such as the Grand have developed a consistent walleye bite, Miller heads to Muskegon Lake, where the night bite is almost legendary.

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He explains that the clear water of the lake, and the corresponding channel heading out to Lake Michigan, makes the Muskegon a prime spot for late-night walleyes.

"Walleyes are designed to feed at night," Miller said as he maneuvered is 19-foot Skeeter down the channel connecting Muskegon Lake with Lake Michigan. "They're nocturnal, and they have eyes like a deer. They have an advantage over their prey at night."

On the other hand, a river such as the Grand, with its dirty water, offers very limited visibility, so walleyes don't need to wait until after sunset to begin feeding.

"I've tried night fishing on the Grand and never catch a thing," Miller said. "On Muskegon Lake, even the guys who really know what they're doing have a hard time catching walleyes during the day."

Miller said that almost all walleyes spawn between mid-March and the end of April. That's when the season for walleyes is closed on Michigan's inland waters. After the season opens back up (on the last Saturday in April), many of the fish in the Muskegon water system have dropped back into the channel and out into Lake Michigan. There they wait for migrating schools of smelt and alewives to flood into the shallows.

These fish spend the daylight hours hugging the bottom, but as the sun dips below the horizon, they begin to rise in the water column, looking for meals. On nighttime fishing trips in the spring, Miller tries to have his lines in the water by shortly after 8 p.m.

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"Before dark, it's a mixed bag. You never know what you might hit," he said. "Sometimes you'll hook into a northern pike or a coho salmon. Last night, we caught a 4-pound smallmouth bass."

You also hook a few straggler walleyes, but according to Miller, the night bite really gets going between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.

When fishing at night, Miller almost exclusively trolls stickbaits. His favorite setup is to run his main line to a three-way swivel. A short (maybe 3-foot) leader goes to the first bait, a suspending deep-diving Rapala Husky Jerk in a bright color such as fire tiger. A longer (perhaps 6-foot) leader attaches to a second stick bait, this one a floating Rapala of a similar color scheme.

"The deep diver really grabs the water and has a lot of action," Miller said. "If the fish are aggressive, they'll see that deep diver and hit it. If they're not aggressive, that will get their attention, but they'll pass it up. Then the shallow diver comes by with a real slow action, and the more passive fish will hit that. That gives the fish a number of different scenarios, and it tells us how the fish are biting."

Another advantage of this set-up is that if he stops trolling for any reason, the bottom lure, the Husky Jerk, remains at its depth, while the top lure, the floating Rapala, heads toward the surface. This keeps the lines from becoming tangled.

Line counter reels mounted on relatively light-action trolling rods let you get your baits down to specific depths. To get the lines away from the boat, Miller uses planer boards. In order to see them in the dark, he attaches a child's glowing bracelet, similar to the necklaces sold in downtown Grand Haven during the 4th of July fireworks.

Just as it got dark enough to notice the glow of the bracelets in the gloom, one of the planer boards darted off to the side, revealing the presence of a fish at the far end of the line. I grabbed the rod and reeled up to the planer board, and once that was out of the way, reeled in a beautiful green-backed walleye, its white eyes reflecting under the glare of our headlamps. It wasn't a monster, but easily over the 15-inch legal limit, perfect size to bring home for dinner. The fish had grabbed the shallow-diver, a sign that the aggressive bite was still to come.

As the evening turned into night, a few other boats joined us in the ritualistic back-and-forth trolling in and around the mouth of the harbor. We landed two more walleyes over the next couple hours, both of them nearly identical in size to the first.

"Typically we consider winter to be the best time to catch big walleyes," Miller said. "Walleye are said to be able to ad 30 percent of their body weight in roe, so the closer you get to when the season closes, the bigger they are. Also, the fall and into winter, they're feeding heavily, getting their weight up.

"These fish have just come out of the river after spawning. It's a good time to catch them. They've done nothing but exert energy spawning the last few weeks, so they really want to feed heavily."

Around midnight, a blinding spotlight ran across our bow, signaling a big freighter coming into harbor. With our eyelids already getting heavy, we took the freighter as a sign it was time to pack up and head home.

Miller explained that a ship of that size coming through the channel stirs up the entire water column, and disrupts the fishing for the next hour or so.

I didn't complain — I had to be to work in less than 6 hours.