West Michigan Bass Classic 2026 - Houghton Lake - Day 2
On day 2 of the classic you go out in order of your day 1 finish. Another good boat number for us and we were going to start on the stuff we saved. A last minute decision sent us back to our day 1 rotation though in hopes we would have that starting spot to ourselves. There was another boat that went that direction and no fault of their own literally drove right over our spot at 50mph. It was shallow and it seemed to have an effect. I was instantly worried when I saw no activity with landscape mode and even more worried when we had made 5 casts without a fish. Something was wrong and we weren’t going to die here or waste a ton of time. The plan today was to hit all of our best stuff quick while they were feeding. Something was off and we had rotated through 5 great spots with little activity to show on the Humminbird, one short fish, and a couple of weak bites to show for it. I don’t know if it was the full moon and clear skies or what the deal was but something was off. I’d have bet money that same rotation at the time of day would yield 15-20 keepers.
We knew it was time to make a run to the stuff we saved for day 2 and were planning on starting on. It was the same story in that section of the lake. One small keeper (14 and ¼ inches) was all that was on a spot that is so good and had no one anywhere near it. What was happening today! We kept running stuff and connected with a good one next. It had to have been around 4 pounds and it felt good to have something worth weighing in. The next 2 places were areas we had expected good results if we fished them in the morning but just hadn’t done that yet. They looked so good on the Humminbird Side Imaging. The first place was a total dud but the next had some life. I no sooner said “if one is here we should catch it right away” and my rod loaded up. The fish made a couple jumps and was definitely the biggest smallmouth we had hooked all week. One last little weird jump and he was gone. It was devastating, that would have been 2 really nice smallmouth in the box and this one was absolutely over 4 pounds. Knowing that we weren’t going to get many opportunities at bites based on how the day was going made it hurt worse.
All you can do is keep moving forward. Trevor picked a largemouth off an isolated grass clump next. I didn’t think anything of this fish but it actually ended up being a decent bass. That made 3 with a lot of time left. We couldn’t get on some stuff we really wanted to next and instead just fished around some areas that were fishing and hoped to get lucky while waiting for boats to leave. Once we got on them we had a keeper smallmouth follow a jig all the way back to the boat while reeling it in to make another cast. When one is coming that hot and you notice it in time to stop the jig, usually you catch it. But today that wasn’t going to be the case.
It was becoming evident that we were going to need to fill those last 2 keeper spots with largemouth. It was back to the largemouth hole we found yesterday and right away we got a nice one. Keeper number 4 and once again all on the jig. The flat calm conditions were just crushing a lot of our water. Those smallmouth weren’t going to come back up to feed or feel comfortable up there with it just glass. You would think we could just keep fishing around and catch a largemouth. We tried that hard and It was impossible to get bites. We never really went over any new water that felt right but at any minute it could turn into one of those things like we found on day 1. Our other largemouth spot that kicked a keeper out the day before and was consistent in practice was empty also. We fished for hours with just nothing happening. It didn’t matter what we did, it sucked, it was mentally exhausting. We burned a ton of gas trying to get that next bite. Tried all sorts of things, just pure scramble mode. Our last high confidence spot was where we had the flipping bite the day before. We got another one right away and it came off in the grass. Who knows how big it was but it had Trevor bound up pretty good down there. I’m sure it was at least a keeper and it was our second big loss of the day.
We even got desperate enough to try some sand suck holes. On Houghton there are lots of places where they sucked sand out of the lake for house foundations (I think). They all have grass in them and they all have largemouth and pike but never any good ones for me in the fall (maybe they are better for other people). One walleye is all we had to show for that effort.
It was one of the most challenging days we have ever had to get bites. But we never lost focus for one second. So many times, I felt like the next cast was it. When you don’t have a limit whatever keeper you get goes right to the bottom line. I felt like if we could get that fish, just maybe we would still be able to get paid. I had some OG Nemesis Baits Bullet Craws that I was using with the flipping stick. Got to save the good stuff for times when you really need it and those original bullet craws are a perfect size for inland lake largemouth. Every flipping bite we had gotten made the line jump on the fall. It finally happened, line jump, hook set, solid weight on the end of it. At 2:45 with a 3:30 check in we put a solid largemouth for number 5 in the boat. Talk about a relief when we landed that one, they were some well deserved high fives. If we could just get rid of that mini keeper now. We even pulled it back out before the weigh in just to be certain it would measure. It was a relief that it measured no problem and there wasn’t any flipping it on a different side or concern about a different measuring board. It did sting knowing that it should be traded out for a 4+ pound smallmouth.
We would get one more flipping bait that never fully had it. I saw the line jump and swung only to come back with no bait, just the hook and weight. Fortunately, we had 3 nice fish to carry us this time and once again I was surprised when we had over 14 pounds. We only fell one spot to 11th with a little over 30 pounds for the event. It turns out that 4 pounder would have only bumped us up a couple spots in the standings, but we would have felt better about it. It really was a good tournament for us and these 2 day events can be such a beast. Throw in a challenging but also really good fishery like Houghton Lake and it can be just brutal at times. A lot of the field really struggles on that place and while it looks good on paper we did too. Nothing came easy so to escape with an 11th place finish and a paycheck was a win. Congrats to Kyle and Brett for the win and all the other teams that did well, they earned it!