Lake Ponemah (Genesee County)

[AnglingAxeMan]

Just looking for any words of wisdom on Lake Ponemah, it'll be my first time on this lake just wondering what I'm in for?

[fishon1219]

I havent fished it in about 10 years and I only caught a couple, but the good news is if your TD cant find you a boat you can fish with me and we can all have a great day of no fish. The only rule I have is you will be limited to 1 rod and it must be a spincaster and you can only bring 1 lure and it has to be a banjo minnow. I forgot that you need to supply the after the tournament barley soda because after a long day on the "Dead sea" they call Ponemah I will be thirsty.

[Skulley]

A very very long day, night, evening, afternoon.............

BD         

[smbassman]

Sorry, it appears I was too late.  Ponemah is not nearly as bad as everyone says.  It's tough, but there are a lot of fish to be caught.  This early in the year is the easiest time to catch your limit (if you know where to go).  Just don't expect to fish one lure and one pattern.  It requires a lot of "junk" fishing, covering water and most importantly paying attention, because the long dry periods can definitely make you lose concentration.  Missing fish out there cannot happen because you don't get that many opportunities.

[fishon1219]

Well our club was going to have our tournament on Ponemah sunday so I went out Saturday and spent the better part of the day practising. I did manage to catch a bunch of fish "Junk" fishing as was posted above. There was really no pattern or lure that seem to dominate, it just seemed to me certain areas had concentrations of bigger fish. We caught fish all day during practise with lots of small fish and felt confident for the tournament that the way to fish this lake was to just go out and go fishing like you have never seen the lake before. I asked the guy that was fishing with me if there were smallies in the lake and he didn't know and about 2 cast's later I landed one about 2 lbs.

Sunday morning I arrrived at the ramp at 5:00am for the tournament to find out that there was another tournament going on. They had 30 boats pre registered and did have a permit. Our tournament director showed up with our permit as well "Thank You DNR" they issued 2 permits for the lake.

Well the parking lot will hold 33 trailers so our club made the decision to head over to tipsico lake after much grumbling from the guys who spent all week practising Ponemah.

We hit the launch about 6:30 and we were fishing by 7. I drew blast off number 7 and I went to a good looking point on the east end of the lake and low and behold there were 5 other boats already there. It must be a good spot. I stayed out on the outside edge of the weed line and watched every body else working the bank.

I caught my first keeper on a case plastic's magic stick at about 7:15 and fished for another 15 minuets in the same area with out a bite. I then started throwing a horny toad parallel to the weed edge in about 10 ft of water and caught 1 more keeper at 7:35.

After afew more casts I went to my old stand by, a 4" power worm on a 1/8 jig head and had my limit by 8:00. My back seater still had nothing. I caught several more keepers with one weighing in at 3lbs 4ounces, but all of my other keepers were 14" 1/4 inches.

I switched to a jig and pig and decided I was going to stick with that the rest of the day trying for another big bite. I was swimming it all day and could still only catch 14" fish. My partner still had nothing. I was concerned why he wasn't catching anything because he was using the same power bait combo I had on and wasn't getting any hits and noticed his rod and reel set up. He was using a 5 ft spinning rod with a 4000 series reel and 12 pound test line and only had about half of his spool filled with line so his casts were only about 20 ft from the boat. I handed him my rod with the 6 lb seaguar floro and finally he caught his first keeper around 12:00.

Before the tournament started one of the guys in our club that is a novice tournament fisherman asked me what to do on this lake and how to catch them so I gave him the best advice I could and he followed it well. I told him to get were the sand meets the weeds and follow it fishing real slow with the power worm set up or a magic stick and if that didnt work go to the outside edge and try the same.

At about 12:30 I see him come screaming up to me in his tracker and you could just tell he was excited. He says "hey kev, do you have any live well chemicals, I have 7 fish in my live well and I dont know if it will keep them alive all day" After I told him just to leave it running the rest of the day and they will be fine I gave him some rejuvenade and shook his hand on his first ever tournament limit and his partner got his first ever tournament fish. It ended up I took 3rd place with 9lbs 10 ounces. First place was 10lbs and 5 ounces with 2nd being right 10-3. I also took big fish honers with my 3-4 kicker.

What a beautiful lake this is with some great bass fishing lots of pike and some huge hybrid sunfish. I caught a couple in the 10 inch range and a crappie that was 14" even. I am so glad that the other tourney was at ponemah because I don't think we would have had such a great day.


(I just added some paragraph breaks.)