Father-daughter getaway at Nichols Lake

Since we had to abort our plans to fish together at camp this next weekend, Rachel and I snuck up to Nichols Lake in Newago County for a long weekend of fishing and camping.

We got up to the campground late on Thursday and didn't get the boat in the water until Friday morning. We went to a location that we had fished years ago where they had placed three 'cribs' in about 15 FOW. We found the fish right away and they were hungry for anything live. No plastics seemed to excite them. We didn't have minnows yet, so we threw crawlers and wax worms at them and they took them. They wanted everything on a bare light wire hook suspended under a cork at about 10-12 foot. We boated 15 keepers and let several small ones live for another day during a few hours in the morning.

We went to BBT on M-37 just south of Baldwin for minnows and then hit the same cribs again late afternoon and fished until just before dark. We boated another 15 fish. With the exception of a handful, all were males. The females had tight eggs and we saw only a few beds in the shallows with no fish in them. Water temperature was 64-66. You could see the bottom in 15 FOW.

Saturday morning we got rained out with some strong thunderstorms rolling through until about 2:30 when we hit the water again. It was a bit slower at the cribs so we ran over to another 'honey hole' I knew of and put a few more in the boat there. Sunday we only could get six fish to cooperate no matter what we tried. All fish were on the small side and ranged from 8-10 on average.

And of course, no trip to Baldwin is complete without a stop at Jones Ice Cream Shop!

Good luck to all who are headed up to Hodenpyl this coming weekend. I'll miss all the fun and laughter!