I caught my first Walleye last weekend. It was a great weekend.
My son, Lucas, and I went up north to a friend’s father’s cabin in Merritt, near Houghton Lake.
Houghton Lake is the largest inland lake in Michigan and, wow, it is big!
I’d never been to Houghton Lake before. I’d been close when we traveled north to toward the bridge. We usually come across from Cadillac on M-55 to US-27 to head north, then merge with I-75 to Gaylord, Mackinac or wherever we might be headed.
If you continue east on M-55 and then turn north on Old US-27, the west launch of Houghton Lake will be on your right in less than a mile
Anyway, Lucas and I, along with Dave and his son John, headed up for a weekend of fishing and hanging out as fathers and sons.
I’ve never fished for walleye or even caught one by accident. We spent the entire first day trying to figure out how to catch them.
We started by drifting the north bay and then we trolled and drifted down Walleye Alley. Walleye Alley is considered to be at the drop off, from 4 to 8 feet deep along the west side of the lake. After fishing Walleye Alley, we headed to the south shore of the lake near the lighthouse.
We were graphing the bottom of the lake for a return trip later that day because the boys were tired of fishing and wanted to return to the cabin.
Even though we tried several different lures and jigs throughout the day, we were unsuccessful in our search for walleye during daylight hours.
Later that evening, Dave and I returned for some fishing at sundown. We proceeded straight from the boat launch to the south shore and the lighthouse.
As we headed out on the water, we noticed a lot of mayflies in the air. For the most part, the mayflies stayed above our heads until the sun set in the west.
As the sun was setting, we drifted in 6 to 8 feet of water with crawler harnesses. We used chartreuse (green), orange and red crawler harnesses. Initially, we had chartreuse and orange in the water and I reeled in two walleye with the orange. After I reeled in two on orange, Dave looked through his tackle box and found a red harness to replace his chartreuse one. Once he did, it didn’t take long to haul in a walleye.
Once we had the first three walleye in the boat, we decided to run back up to where we had started to drift and make another run at it.
We motored back to our starting point and proceeded to drift. The only problem with this scenario was the presence of the mayflies. The mayflies were so thick that we had to communicate by sign language, which neither of us knows.
If we would open our mouths to talk, they would enter. I had mayflies between my glasses and my face.
We couldn’t sit down without squishing 10 or more at once, and they were everywhere on the boat and in my tackle bag because I had forgotten to close one of the zippers.
We were in the middle of the mayfly hatch.
All in all, it was a great weekend of walleye fishing and hanging out with my son. This was my Father’s Day celebration with my son because we will not be together for Father’s Day on account of both my boys being gone on a mission trip to Alabama.
If you’re still looking for something to do for your father on Father’s Day, go fishing with him. He’ll always remember it and he’ll love it, even if he doesn’t normally fish.
As we were being attacked by the mayflies during that evening of fishing, I couldn’t help thinking about how it was a good thing we didn’t take the boys back out that night.
They would have been miserable.
It made me realize, as a parent, how we are continually being careful, or that we should be careful, not to let our children be bombarded with the mayflies of this world.
We should use discretion in what we allow are children to be exposed to. Psalm 2:11 states, “Discretion will protect you and understanding will guard you.”
Zeeland, MI —
