Rotten Worms, Cold Hands and Hog Suckers

Busy, busy, busy weekend. Too many options and not enough Jeffs to go around. At any given moment I had roughly six responsible adult things I could have been doing. House projects. Pole barn projects. Condo cleanup. School work. Work work. Walleye fishing in Erie or the Detroit River.

And what did I choose? Sucker fishing. For crying out loud. What am I doing with my life.

The original plan, written lightly in pencil, was to tow the walleye boat to Ludington and troll the shoreline of Lake Michigan for brown trout. Sounds great…until you see the forecast calling for 7 foot waves. That’s a hard pass.

So Thursday night a half-baked Plan B started forming. By Friday it somehow became reality. Step one was drive to Muskegon mid-day and meet Surgeon Jenn. She is on call all weekend doing real surgeon things, not blog Surgeon Jenn things. We squeezed in a quick green juice prep session and before she went back to saving lives.

Next stop was El Rancho with Logan. This important meeting was to discuss a brand new Logan Secret, eat a Fajipina, come up with the sucker plan, and gather our ceremonial meat rig toothpicks. We nailed 3 out of the 4. Forgot the toothpicks.

Saturday morning plan was simple. Make soup. Work on Logan’s secret project. Then head to the world-famous PM River to hunt record class hog suckers. This was going to be a much better sucker trip than last time. Two major upgrades. First, I brought fresh hand warmers that were guaranteed to work. Second, it was almost 60 degrees the day before and about 55 this morning. I wasn’t even going to need the hand warmers.

Logan was getting antsy and left early to claim the magic sucker hole while I wrapped up some condo stuff. By the time I arrived, Logan was already set up…and there was another sucker crew there. Wait…other people do this? Logan told me the other crew had already caught one and lost one. Optimism immediately skyrocketed.

My setup was two Shimano bass rods with custom perch rigs. 1 ½ ounce pyramid sinker. Number eight Tru Turn hook. The magic bait was half alive nightcrawlers. Basically, almost rotten. I was hunting hogs and hogs like a little stink on their worms.

Logan had two custom sucker rods. One with his lucky cork handle wrap and the other a sweet baby blue rod. Same general setup except his perch rigs had some salmon fly colored magic on them and he was using fresh leaf worms.

Lines go out…Nothing. Also the weather report was a lie. It wasn’t 60 degrees. It wasn’t 50. It wasn’t 40. 36 degrees. Wind. Light rain. Effin cold…and yes, the hand warmers were still sitting at the condo. Fifteen minutes and my hands were already cold, and we hadn’t seen a bite…Then…legit bite on my rod. Rod tip bouncing. I set the hook, perfectly mind you, and…nothing.

Shortly after that Arthur’s family showed up (I don’t know Arthur, just name dropping like I do). Later we learned the full crew was Arthur, his brother, their mom, and their grandpa. A few other stragglers were wandering around too but I was busy staring at rod tips trying to figure out what a sucker bite actually looks like.

Arthur’s gear looked pretty similar except for the legendary yellow rods. Some had the old push button reels. Their sinkers looked like literal nuts from a bolt bin. Apparently that system works because they immediately started catching fish. No net though, so Logan jumped in to help net a couple for them.

Then one of Logan’s rods went…I grabbed it and reeled in a sucker. Technically Logan’s rod though, so we are not counting that for me.

Cutting to the chase…We ended up 12 for somewhere between 18 and 20 bites (Or 40 to 50 bites if you asked Logan.)

Arthur’s family was going fish for fish with us most of the afternoon. My rotten worms worked great. My hands were frozen. And I landed not one but two Master Angler class suckers. Two different species even. Hog hunting people!

What I learned today:

• These fish bite in flurries. Nothing for twenty minutes then chaos.

• Logan’s Pickled Sunshine rig catches suckers. Fantastic. I am really hoping to not hear the words Pickled Sunshine for at least a week.

• I re-tied some gear after the last sucker trip and was happy to see my stuff actually worked.

• Arthur’s family might be from northern Canada. I’m guessing this based on his mom trying to convince the boys to put warm boots on. I don’t think she won that argument. Later their grandpa wandered over to chat. He was wearing Crocs. No socks. Of course!

• Arthur must be some sort of sucker savant. These guys were showing off by reeling fish in backwards on the push button reels and even flipping the rods upside down while cranking. I took notes and will practice.

Huge thanks to Arthur for noticing we had way too much gear to haul back to the truck in one trip and walking over to help without us even asking. That was a cool move, especially knowing he was probably missing bites while helping us.

By the end of the day we counted around 20 different people rotating through that hole…which leads me to a question…Are people actually reading these sucker reports? That would be weird.

Next week - no fishing people. 5K in Ludington and need to go buy more stuff at the Ultimate Fishing Show in Grand Rapids...maybe one day this moe foe blog will hit and people will start giving me fishing stuff - yeah right!