Traverse Bays trip - need pointers

[Morry]

Hello to all bassers of GLB.  I'm a new member (51 year old school teacher) from Lambertville, MI (just north of Toledo) who is making a first fishing trip north next week and would like to sample the great smallmouth fishing I've heard about upstate. I'm planning to stay in Petoskey a couple of days and then move over to Traverse City. I need a good place to put in on each bay and any help you could provide on good stretches of shorline to fish that would be within a few miles of the ramp. I don't know if Little T. Bay is good bassin or not so please feel free to suggest other lakes if those I mentioned don't sound so good right now.
Thanks for your time and any help you can offer!!  Morry

[fishndooder]

Can't help you much with little traverse bay, but may be able to assist with GT bays.  First I would fish east bay.  The boat launch is located on old mission peninsula and is roughly 3 miles out.  This is pretty much the only boat launch on this bay.  As of last week the smallies had just finished for the most part getting off beds on east bay.  We were able to fine some smaller males still around them, but they were pretty small (~2lbs).  If you decide to launch at the launch I recomended the easiest place for you to find fish will be south.  I don't know if you have looked at any arials of the bays or not, but if you do you will notice that the whole south end of east bay is a huge flat ranging from 20 to 5 feet deep.  You will also notice a bunch of dark patches.  these weed patches are slight dips mainly from about 5-7 fow with short weeds within them.  The smallies are stacked in these right now with the majority in the 2-3.5 lb range.  try fishing with chartreuse and white spinnerbaits as well as lighter colored tubes. 
hope this helps
Brent
 

[Morry]

Thanks much for the help on East Bay.  Do you think this will still be good in three weeks as it looks like it will be mid-August before I can come?

[fishndooder]

It should be better in mid to late august then the next few weeks.  1-2 weeks into post spawn can get pretty tough.  The bass move into deep water (like 30-40 feet) and can be a tough bite, because often times are suspended.  At this point the later you are able to wait the better the fishing will be.  After a few weeks in deep water I find a lot of big fish start to come into shallower areas in the evenings and they are hungry (like jerkbait, spinnerbait).  If you can't find them shallow often times you can drag heavy (1/2 once ish) tubes down the slopes of weeded drops and find some nice fish.  That is where most of the bass will be during mid day, also look under sailboats you will see them 1-5' down on shady sides.  If you dont mind using live bait from what everyone says your catch rate will be 4x greater.  The sailboat fish can be a tough catch!, so dont waste to much time unless your using leaches.

hope this makes sense pm me if you need anymore help