I broke my own cardinal rule.
Over the years I’ve learned never to cancel a fishing trip because of a weather forecast or a fishing report. Yet today, I cancelled a walleye trip on Saginaw Bay.
Just last week the walleye fishing was still pretty good. In fact, my grandson Trent caught a master angler fish last Tuesday evening. You can read that story here.
But now the fishery is in a slump. It’s fairly common for the fishing to slow down mid summer, but the last several days it’s come to a screeching halt. As anglers, we’re always looking for an excuse and best one I can come up with is unstable weather.
I’ve talked with several avid “weekend warrior” anglers, and even some charter captain, and they all agree…the fishing is slow right now.
Normally I wouldn’t let that keep me off the water. I figure we can always jump in the Starcraft Islander and scratch out a few fish for a fun day on the water. The trip I just cancelled had more at stake though.
I was supposed to fish with a couple of friends from the Dow Chemical company and two others from Sportsman Channel. We we’re going to shoot a piece for the Outdoor Magazine tv show with charter captain Donny Carpenter of Captain D’s Charter Service.
As much as I wanted to hit the water, I wasn’t convinced we could catch a good number of fish, and Donny agreed. The last thing I wanted to do was take four people out for a mediocre night of fishing.
So the shoot is postponed….for now. I’m confident the fishing will pick up in the next few weeks and we’ll give it a try then.
In the meantime I keep thinking about a bunch of big Saginaw Bay walleye laughing at me for making the wrong decision……