D and R Sports Tournament 2026 Muskegon Lake #2 - Practice

I was going to get a chopped up practice for this one. Practice just hasn’t really worked out that well this year as far as just getting a day to devote to it. I had a big mysis sampling event at work that involved a trip out to the middle of the lake (actually in Wisconsin waters) that was going to make this week a challenge. I did at least get a mini practice session in with the girls earlier this week.

I wouldn’t say the mini practice session was super fast paced or productive but I did come away with a few things. I also got some confidence in a bait that I had been saving for this exact time of year. Most importantly we had a great time and the girls got some more experience including running the trolling motor. We didn’t catch any real big ones but they both got some action on their own. It also included some boat driving and checking out some of the new sandbars on the river. These are the best days!

Real practice continued the unproductive theme. I had limited time so I launched in the dark and wanted to see every little bit of life I could. I had a unusually calm Muskegon Lake and I really hoped the surface of the lake would reveal the sweet spots. The lake can reveal a lot of clues first thing in the morning when it is calm. It was not going to be the case today, it was the dead sea. Well other than the hundred of mute swans scattered around the lake. As someone who cares about waterfowl this is hard to watch and there is no way these invasive swans aren’t impacting the food sources for our migrating ducks. No seagulls diving, no bass blowing up, just flat calm. I fished around and did some driving/looking. Some obvious stuff had a few fish on it but nothing sneaky.

I was getting bites on a mix of fishing slow and moving baits. Mostly looking for fish in grass or fish that were schooling on shad. No reason to go practice a bunch of hard cover or places I really wanted to go on tournament day. Those are places that don’t take much time to fish and are easy to just rotate in. The downside is anyone else can fish all those places too. It is much better if you have a sweet spot in the middle of a giant grass flat.

I think the highlight was the flathead catfish I caught flipping grass. It wasn’t a very big one but it is always cool to catch one in West Michigan. I have a buddy who swears they are really good to eat and I’ve never eaten one. If I had more time, I think I would have sampled that one.

I kept running around looking for the right spot but just never found it. Everywhere I did catch fish though wasn’t random. It was always right for some bites but they just weren’t big ones. Maybe some of that will change on tournament day, it certainly has potential. Confidence isn’t sky high for this one but it isn’t too low either. We’ll just take the day as it comes and see what is working. I don’t even have a particular spot I want to start on. Looking forward to seeing where this one ends up!