Houghton Lake is an incredible fishery. Last year, we caught (and released) lots of walleyes during our May guide trips. This year we struggled. We caught lots of fish (and did decent on walleyes - but not nearly as good as we did last year). We normally fish Charlie Brewer Slider 3” slider grubs on an 1/8 oz Old Fart Lures jighead. This year, I don’t know why, but downsizing was the key to everything on Houghton Lake.

We moved to fishing a 1 1/2” slider grub on a 3/32 oz jighead and lit the fish up. My son, who is awesome at discovering or tweaking our approaches, has caught lots of big fish on this tiny bait. But this spring, this bait performed so well, that we switched to almost using it exclusively. We caught and released several large walleyes on it, big northerns, plump panfish (biggest gill was 11.25”), and giant perch.

The weather in Michigan was so off - we never saw 70 degree water temps in May. I fished with long underwear most of the month of May. We saw lots of severe cold fronts. I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but whatever the reason, we had 25 trips that proved the effectiveness of this small bait.

Next time you are struggling to catch fish, try downsizing and see if that makes all the difference!