Like me some Loon Lake 11-18-2016

[djkimmel]

For this week's trip, Derek and I picked Loon Lake in Oakland County because it looked interesting, we'd never been there and it was said to have both largemouth and smallmouth bass in it. I'm very happy with this pick!

I don't think we figured it out real well but we caught a few fish and the short report is that they were all solid, good ones!

One other thing we learned about Loon Lake pretty fast that it has a healthy population of full-grown Northern Pike! YOUCH!


The catching didn't take long this morning! We were working our way out a point right by the boat ramp when Derek hooked a solid fish on his spinnerbait! He pulled up a really nice largemouth bass!

Before he even had the bass in his hand I hooked up solid on a bream colored Strike King KVD 2.5 shallow crankbait I cast back along the point to a thick weed clump!


Unfortunately, the water was roiled up by the swirl of a big gator instead of a bass - a theme that would repeat itself several times on this day!


I hand landed an easy keeper Northern Pike gator moments later after a bulldogging fight. This was not my biggest gator of the day! oh boy...

We fished around more drops, the mouth of the river and out on to another point without any action. Things picked up again when we got on top of the point out into the lake though.

Derek hooked a bigger pike on his spinnerbait that I hand landed again. Then I got slammed by a yet bigger pike on my Kustom Kicker spinnerbait that took off behind the boat stripping out line before I lost the big pike when it turned sideways and did some big head shakes! Part of me wanted to beat the fish by landing it, and part of me was glad it was gone!


Out near the end of the point Derek got hammered again on his spinnerbait. We first thought it was another pike but it boiled near the boat and we saw it was another very solid largemouth bass!

We didn't get anymore bites on that point and moved on down the lake some more. For a little while not much happened and we weren't seeing much sign of life. I noticed the other end of the lake looked more like weed clumpy smallmouth water and good jerkbait targets so I switched to a Ghost Minnow LC Pointer and started snapping it along the weed edge.

We were in a hole in the other end of the lake that had lit up on the graph and showed tons of fish out in water over 20 feet deep so I put down the jerkbait and threw a blade bait. Nothing on that but we got by the break again and Derek made one cast with a Bullet Craw on a jighead only to get bit off hard!


We moved back towards the open lake and I made cast into some open water on a moderate depth flat along the steep break with the jerkbait again. I just started to snap it along when it went WANG on me! Solid fish with some nice head-shaking and then it jumped clear of the water! Big inland lake smallmouth bass - yes!!!

This made me feel a lot better to fight a really nice smallie to the boat and land it. We tried hard in that general area (the wind was blowing pretty good making it challenging to stick to an area) to get another bit but failed. Almost like the bass was a loner?!?

We started moving along the steep break again alternating casts out deep, parallel to the break and up on to the flat. I happened to look down seeing an object. The water is dark and tannic so though it is fairly clear it isn't real easy to see far. I thought I saw a fish next to the object that looked like a small part of a stump.

We were already too close for comfort and sure enough it was a fish as it started coasting away back up on to the flat further and away from us. BIG smallie! I mean a whopper! Because of the water color I can't be 100% sure but it looked and acted like a bass not a carp and it was way bigger than the one I had caught earlier. Got my heart pumping.

The big fish pulled a vanishing act - not hard to do in the dark water and with the strong wind blowing us around! But we kept our eyes open for more and tried be more alert to bass just sitting there.

We were working our way down a very steep drop close to shore when a bass came at a steep angle up out of the depths heading straight for my jerkbait. It wasn't coming fast but it appeared to be on a mission. I stopped the jerkbait right next to the boat and the bass ATE IT!!! Yes!


I set the hook and went toe-to-toe with a slightly lethargic but big inland lake smallmouth bass! Got it in the boat after a short but fun, fun fight. What another nice bass and to have it at Derek's feet maybe 2 feet from the side of the boat was all the more exciting!!!

We fished that area heard without another sign of a bass... and then moved along the shore. We even hit some docks in an effort to figure them out better. We weren't catching a lot of course but everything was really solid and nice!

We came around a corner in the break running right down the steep break when I saw some more wood on the bottom about 20 feet from the break. There's 3 BIG smallies just sitting there! They didn't seem spooked yet but they acted like they were too aware of our presence...

They slowly glided down the bottom to the break and out into deep water. I tried hard not to make noise or sudden movements thinking how that last bass had hit at the boat like it wasn't there!

I went a short way down the edge and then turned around. When I worked my way back - no hits - but I saw 2 of the bass sitting down the break almost out of sight - so they hadn't gone far. We tried to entice them to bite but they just ghosted away into deeper water... darn! So close!

We never went back to those fish and I wish we had but Loon Lake is actually pretty complex so we found plenty of new things to fish and wanted to see as much of the lake as possible.

Later, we had another really nice smallie come up out of deeper water after Derek's lure but it didn't hit and that was our last bit of action.

So we didn't catch and bunch but we were both happy with the average. Even the pike were all easy keepers, if you're into pike. So yes, we put Loon Lake high up on the 'must return later' list for next year. We think we can zero in to the bass a little better next time maybe. Fun!

[21XDC]

 Nice trip!

[djkimmel]

Thank you!

[Jay-MadWags]

Loon is a great lake for summer topwater action too.

[djkimmel]

Oh! That's good to know!