Took a couple days off work for a much needed 4 day weekend exploring some new waters in the upper peninsula's western counties. Focused heavily on the bigger waters of the area more known for big fish than density with a little time spent on some smaller waters. Spent a majority of the time on the Michigamme, Peavy Pond, Cisco chain, and Chicagon, but also spent a little time checking out the Groveland mine ponds and a couple smaller lakes further west into Gogebic county.

Water temps on the bigger bodies ranged from 70-74 and the smaller lakes were more in the 76-78 range. Some of the lakes, like Peavy for example, are not on our map chip or navionics and I could not find a depth map anywhere online for it, so it was like fishing completely uncharted territory. The autochart function on our Humminbird unit definitely came in handy. Makes you really appreciate the advantages we have with technology these days.

I fished most of Thursday alone with Chris joining me in the evening. Thursday morning was the tail end of a cold front and the weather started to warm by mid afternoon but the fish were slow and non committal. Had zero action in the morning but in the afternoon I had 3 hesitant fish nip the bait in the figure eight but none of them hooked up for more than a second or two. We had no action during the evening shift.

Friday was a completely different story with weather. Its hard to draw it up more perfectly than this for a summer weather pattern. Warmer temps, moderate winds mostly out of the West, and several scattered t-storms in the surrounding area popping up here and there over the course of the day had the fish very active all day long. Found some fishy looking water rather quickly and it didn't take long for fish to start showing up. Shortly after seeing the first fish of the morning, Chris had a giant in the 50" class swing and miss a couple feet from the boat on rubber. No more than 30 seconds later, as hes still explaining the size of her shovel head, I have a fish explode from underneath my Bandit bucktail going full body into the air. It was one of the most violent strikes I have ever seen. She was a strong fish and put up quite the fight but we were able to get her in the net for the first fish of the trip. Continued exploring the area a little mapping it out with autochart until focusing back on the spot those 2 fish came from. Maybe an hour or 2 later, as we were making a pass a little further out from that waypoint, Chris has deja vu as what we assume was the same giant from before takes another swing at his bulldawg 5 feet from the boat, but this time she didn't miss it. Unfortunately, she was not hooked well and headshook her way off. It was a sad moment but with the action we were having, we felt confident the day wasnt over. After taking a quick lunch/swim break to cool off we decided to explore some other areas and stumbled across a spot that looked very similar to our first waypoint, so we spent some time charting it out and it did not take long to produce. As a storm was approaching we were able to put another thick fish in the net, but this storm was no joke and we decided to call an audible. Pulled the boat out and drove through the downpour and lightning to check out a couple other new but much smaller lakes. Found a handful of small fish between the two lakes but none were caught.

After a fun Friday, we had some confidence and decided to try our hand at exploring another big lake on Saturday. Unfortunately, the weather took a turn for the worse, as temps fell considerably and the clouds disappeared completely. Even though we found a lot of spots that looked really fishy, the fish just didnt seem to be active. Zero action all morning until a very small window opened in the afternoon. I had a fish go around the 8 several times before finally eating. It immediately went airborn 3 feet high, nearly jumping into the boat but shook the hooks mid air. Shortly after, Chris hooked up and landed his first Tiger. It wasn't a big fish but had one gorgeous pattern to it. The action died and we decided to call another audible and do something we really suck at…troll. Found a gas station, filled up the boat, bought a case of beers, and trolled til dark. Found some amazing open water structure in the process and some nice schools of what I believe were ciscoes in 30-40 FOW but we did not get a rip.

Sunday was a big pile of post frontal bluebird BS.

Overall an awesome time spent in God's Country. Its hard to compete with the amount of beautiful scenery and sheer volume of amazing water to fish up there. The muskies are just a bonus.