Go west young men

First off, neither me or Jeff is exactly young anymore. But we did head west today to Kent County to fish a couple of new lakes. First stop was Campau Lake. We were on the water by 7 and long lined 1/32 oz jigs and sliders. The bass liked what we were offering and that is all we caught other than one decent black crappie. By 8 am the ski boats came out so we decided to put the boat on the trailer and head to Campbell Lake.

The two lakes couldn't be more different. Campau is mostly shallow, the deepest water we found was 16 ft, and Campbell bottoms out around 50 feet with steep drops all around the lake. Campbell did have some nice patches of cabbage on the drops and we found if we could run our jigs tight to the deep edge of the cabbage we would get bit.

While we didn't exactly tear them up we managed to put around 10 decent fish in the box and released countless bass. Biggest fish today was just shy of 12".Attachment 381306Attachment 381307

Sparty, VBott,

Should have said something, I would have steered you West, but a few different locations.

Campau, (Which is 2 lakes, (Campau & Kettle) does not have a large Crappie population. As you had found, it has a nice striped carp population, and is also a LARGE MUSKIE population.
Enough so that it is fished allot for them, and a few record Muskie have come out of there.

Campbell is hit or miss, Shallows for the Bass, and that deep hole for panfish. Usually that is more populated by Gills, not so much Crappie.

Duncan, which is not far from Campau, has a decent population of Crappie. If you go West again, try Duncan. If you want to go towards the border, try Bassett.
It's a 2 track to get to, but limited as its a steep launch, however, only a few houses, and is very relaxing, and quiet.

Basset, used to be my goto holiday weekend location, but I have boated myself out of that lake, unless I take my Kayak.

If you head for Duncan ever me know, I can give you some locations.

OE

Nice catch, thanks for sharing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OneidaEagle

Sparty, VBott,

Should have said something, I would have steered you West, but a few different locations.

Campau, (Which is 2 lakes, (Campau & Kettle) does not have a large Crappie population. As you had found, it has a nice striped carp population, and is also a LARGE MUSKIE population.
Enough so that it is fished allot for them, and a few record Muskie have come out of there.

Campbell is hit or miss, Shallows for the Bass, and that deep hole for panfish. Usually that is more populated by Gills, not so much Crappie.

Duncan, which is not far from Campau, has a decent population of Crappie. If you go West again, try Duncan. If you want to go towards the border, try Bassett.
It's a 2 track to get to, but limited as its a steep launch, however, only a few houses, and is very relaxing, and quiet.

Basset, used to be my goto holiday weekend location, but I have boated myself out of that lake, unless I take my Kayak.

If you head for Duncan ever me know, I can give you some locations.

OE

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Basset down by Gun Lake? I looked it up on google maps and it shows quite a few houses on the east side. Could they be new since you were there? Access from the west on Basset Lake access trail? Looks like mostly pontoons tied to the docks, though.

That’s the one.

It’s like 12 on the East side & 4 on the west.

That “Very Few” for the GR area.

When I have been there in the past, the locals are hardly ever on the water.

Been there and had whole lake to myself many times.

OE


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On Campau/Kettle we had a ski boat out early that was pulling his skier through the narrows even though us and another tiny boat with two not tiny guys were fishing in the narrows. Another one was running nose up and throwing a huge wake. He made a loop around us and I thought the double rollers he sent our way were going to swamp us over the transom. That's when we decided to leave. I'm sure we'll fish Basset sometime this summer. Sounds like my kind of lake. I had something hooked on Campau that felt like a log until it shook it's head. I tried to horse it and broke my 6 lb test in the process.

You know, you can Horse Becky, but not Muskie.


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Probably the main reason I do not do as much summer pan fishing
I do not care to get up at 4:30 just to go fishing before all the tubers and skiers and such take over the lake
I love trying new lakes
Good job Jerry and Jeff


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Seems like with everyone "working from home" the lakes are busier than normal. I'm OK with fishing lakes like Sessions or Campbell even if we mostly catch bass. Usually when school starts the boat traffic dies down but who knows what will happen this year. I guess us fishermen are just collateral damage of the pandemic.