@TnRiver46 Great smallie by your buddy and I'm pretty sure your fish is a saugeye. Spots on the dorsal and barred tail. Walleye have a black splotch on the back end of the dorsal and white tip on the bottom of the tail. Cool fish.

3 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

and a walleye

Not a walleye. They have a white spot on the tail.

I believe it's a sauger or a saugeye.

Looks like @JonB2 beat me to it above

1 hour ago, 2earlye said:

I apologize. I came off rude. Tight lines.

I'm sure she's retired. There are a lot of regular posters here that are.

I'm not lol

32 minutes ago, JonB2 said:

@TnRiver46 Great smallie by your buddy and I'm pretty sure your fish is a saugeye. Spots on the dorsal and barred tail. Walleye have a black splotch on the back end of the dorsal and white tip on the bottom of the tail. Cool fish.

I rarely catch any of them so I’m not great at telling them apart. Not sure if we have saugeye but we do have lots of sauger, caught a nice one in the same river (I think)

And another below the dam last week

And then a couple weeks ago, I think I got this (maybe) walleye

All I go by is black blotches are sauger and no blotches are walleye 😂. And I’ve never heard of anyone catching a saugeye in my region so I just assumed they don’t exist here

35 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

I rarely catch any of them so I’m not great at telling them apart. Not sure if we have saugeye but we do have lots of sauger, caught a nice one in the same river (I think)

And another below the dam last week

And then a couple weeks ago, I think I got this (maybe) walleye

All I go by is black blotches are sauger and no blotches are walleye 😂. And I’ve never heard of anyone catching a saugeye in my region so I just assumed they don’t exist here

Those first two are sauger, blotches on the body, and your third fish is indeed a walleye...you can see the black mark on the dorsal. Your fish in question has no body blotches, but spots and barring on the fins; likely a saugeye which is a hybrid between sauger and walleye. You folks with sauger and spotted bass are lucky. We only have the basic largemouth, smallmouth and walleye in MI!

@JonB2 , gotcha! Thanks. I know some states stock saugeye but I’m guessing they can also naturally hybridize?

And if you ever get a chance to fish for coosa strain spotted bass, now known as Alabama bass, do it! They are ferocious

Back on the water yesterday morning and today after a few weeks.

A couple 17" buzzbait eaters, amongst a bunch of short fish on Lake 19 yesterday:

This morning was a bit more interesting. I revisited a new place I tried for the first time back in May. It's an out-of-the-way backwater, publicly accessible only from a walking trail on county land. I've been aware of it for a long time, but only got around to trying it this year, as the extra physical effort of carrying down was not very appealing given I had other choices. But....of course that's true for everyone else too, so there was high possibility of a low-pressure situation.

Fortunately the trail is fairly short, regularly mowed, wide and smooth enough to pull the kayak on a cart down to the water.

On my first trip in May, I spent 3 hours, and caught 10, all in the 2-3lb class. Trip #2 today produced 19 more, most the same size. Once located, they were seemingly willing to bite whatever I threw, which ended up mostly being a buzzbait, frog, senko, spinnerbait and speed worm.

I was greeted by some moody fog on arrival:

Some of the better fish were these two 17"-ers on Cavitron buzzbait and Pad Crasher frog

and two 18"s on a spinnerbait

Bonus crappie on the spinnerbait too.

No giants yet, but so far, the place seems like a bit of a hidden gem, and on both days I was the only one there.