Need a little Lake Charlevoix Help

[Irish21080]

Hey guys looking for a little advice on a trip we are planning to Lake Charlevoix next June 14-21 2014. We will be coming up for a week next summer with my wife, kids and another couple. I have found houses all around the lake to rent and was wondering where on the lake would be the prime location for fishing. The hope is to dump the ranger in on Saturday and not take it out of the water for a week. How is the South Arm that time of year?  Thanks in advance.

[motocross269]

It all depends on how you hit the spawn.....
My club had a tournament up there this year about the same time frame that you are planning on being there..I Pre-fished it for a week and sighted hundreds of fish but barely got hit...The fish were just starting to move up.. On Sunday, the day of the tournament, things went crazy...If memory serves me right around 24lbs won it with a few bags over 20lbs...It was like Tarpon fishing in two feet of water. I literally caught a limit in one spot without touching my trolling motor..
The south arm was pretty well done, it was slow for me that week..
You are just going to have to put some good glasses on and start out on the breaks and work your way into shallow water looking for occupied beds....

Charlevoix has always been feast or famine for me....If they're on it is a blast but the week before prefishing I could hardly raise my arm above my head at the end of the day after casting and trying to get something going....

One bonus is the Walleye guys were killing them that week.....so that is something to consider..

Charlevoix is hard to beat as a vacation spot...The beach at the state park is awesome for the kids and there is plenty for everyone to do in the area...

[djkimmel]

The South Arm could be well near the end of the spawn if it is moderately warm. We had a cold spring yet the bass came on fast anyway as soon as it warmed as moto pointed out. I like the South Arm for a smaller boat, for when the wind is blowing or when the main lake seems squirrelly.

The South Arm is a little more like a Southern Michigan lake with darker water, some weeds, softer bottoms and more of an inland lake fishing feel to it. There are largemouth in parts of it, lots of pike here and there, and some big walleye shallower at times.

For the main lake, the bass generally come on earlier in the East end of the lake and the 'spawn' works its way West as things warm up so you might want to concentrate on the East half of the lake at the time you're going. But! It all depends on the trends next year for the couple-three weeks before you get there.

Luckily, it's a BIG lake with about zillion bass in it! So there will be bass biting somewhere. Even later in the day can make a BIG difference over a slow-starting morning, even in the same spots.

[JBASS]

One  tip I can give you on that lake when fising a tube....Use a very fat head so the front of the tube is bulging...The bigger the better..
And as said what the fish are a doing for time of year...Just my 2

[capt charlie's charters]

everything depends on the weather !  if the wind out of the west or northwest or even a freak out of the north east is howling you won't be able to stay on the main body and have to trailer over to the south arm.  if you find nice enough place on the south arm, then that would be the way to go, just pay attention to the NO WAKE ZONE connecting the two if you don't the sheriff will.

[djkimmel]

You can launch at Ironton. That way you can easily go into the main lake or the South Arm. I do that whenever I'm not sure what I'm expecting in the spring (or fall).

[t-bone]

So a recent Hook and Look show would give you some ideas. They were up there in the early spring and hit the lake prespawn - we ran into Kim at the launch while we were prefishing for a tournament. They were fishing the east end of the lake and catching fish starting to come up on the breaks but not yet all the way on the flats. They used jerkbaits and pulled them off the flats and long pauses over the breaks. They caught some nice fish.

The south arm will warm up faster and you can find fish spawning before the main lake. My spawning areas on the main lake were empty but fishing were starting to roam and I was able to catch them on jerkbaits and tubes.
I did find a few on beds in the south arm.

Good luck!

[djkimmel]

Lake Charlevoix taught me quite a bit about spawning smallmouth bass early in my sightfishing learning curve, but even more about what bigwater, deep lake smallmouth bass do when they're not spawning.

If you started out learning about bass fishing in the magazines of the 1970s, there was lots of bad 'advice' to unlearn if you wanted to catch more and bigger bass more often. I can be a trusting person so sometimes it took a while to catch on.

I guess I will need to get back there more often since there's always so much more to learn. Smallmouth bass can seem a little weird at times, even with so much more better information of so many types that are available now!