TOPIC:

Has anyone seen schools of bait fish yet? Usually they show up around this time or sooner some years.

My screen was blank all day
yesterday i got a new finder last year and haven't marked much with it miss my old eagle fish id. Gps is nice on the lowrance dsi but not good on fish still trying to learn this new crap

I havent seen any bait yet at all - but last time I was out was last weekend.

Nope, none today.

I marked a pod on the Inland wall Tuesday afternoon. Water temps are all over the place, clean water and 41 in 50ft off gary, then 48 and cloudy at Inland. I not sure what the alewives do this time of year. I was catching lakers off shore at the ditch in December and they were spitting 3 inch ales out.

No bait. No salmon with alewives or gobies caught so far this year. Matter of fact, even the lakers I cut yesterday were devoid of any baitfish. Plenty of Asian Lady beetles being gulped by cohos the last two days. I'm of the opinion the ladybugs are one of the reasons our spring coho late in the spring has gone south for the last many years. Hoards of them un-hibernate on warm, southwind days, get blown out over the lake and crash land in the water. The cohos key on them and follow the mats of floating bugs offshore and away from where we are fishing. It's a bit early to start seeing many alewives in the shallows spawning but if they aren't here in another week, the outlook is dismal. Several of the 'hos I caught today were bigger than what I've been catching. They must have been snacking on something.

We marked a couple large schools of bait south of St. Joe on Saturday.

I like BNature thought on coho.
Seems like the shallow bite, at least at MC, last year and this has been best after a couple warm days (bug hatching weather) followed by north wind to concentrate the insects near shore. Seemed o be that way Tues and Wed last week and a couple times last April. On the other hand, might be thinking to much into this.

and there was some bait on graph in MC harbor (and diving terns) on way in on Sunday. Or, may have been smolts.
on that note, I've seen two throwback salmonids that have been bitten (scarring/scales missing 1/3 way up from tail) by something larger this spring

Hey guys,

I have been reading this thread on Michigan sportsman which I will post the link here. About page 6 Jay Wesley ( MDNR) starts to post about the current bait fish situation in Lake Michigan and then compares it to Lake Ontario. There is a lot of great info he gives, one very interesting one was the Cisco or Lake Herring population expanding in our lake. He says they think they eat the larva of the mussles and goby which explains why they can expand when the water is still being filtered out...the predators then eat the Ciscos connecting the bottom of the food chain once again to the top creating balance. Apparently in Lake Onatrio they have a healthy population of both species so there isn't as much pressure on Ale's.

www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?t=535454

Check it out.