- Hello, everyone.

Welcome to "Michigan Out of Doors".

We are so glad you're here this week because we have a brand new show headed your way.

Jordan Brown was able to spend a day on the MWT recently.

That's the Michigan Walleye Tour.

It's a series of tournaments that happens across the state every year, and he spent day one out of Sault Ste.

Marie on the tournament there recently.

Lots of exciting fishing action and lots of interesting information about the tour.

You won't wanna miss that story.

And we'll top things off with a walleye recipe this week.

Make sure you stay tuned.

I'm Jenny Ciolek, and it's time for "Michigan Out of Doors".

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(intense rock music) - [Narrator] At Boss Shotshells, we make all our shot shells right here in Michigan and deliver them direct to your door.

(laid back music) (dramatic music) (birds chirp) - Hey, good morning, Jeff Willis, tournament director of Michigan Walleye Tour.

Here we are in beautiful Sault Ste.

Marie in Michigan setting up our fourth qualifying event of 2025, the 30th anniversary season of the Michigan Walleye Tour.

And well, you just can't say enough about this venue, just a beautiful, beautiful place to come walleye fishing.

Sault Ste.

Marie is definitely a destination spot that if you're looking to get out and do some fishing with the family or friends, this is a place you wanna come see.

Kind of a different curve ball, different situation for us this year.

Our third qualifying event of the year, we had to cancel a whole weekend of tournament fishing.

That's the first time we've ever had to do that, but weather just continuing to be a factor for us and something we just gotta work ourselves through.

So yeah, here we are.

We got the guys in the water, boats set up, and we're gonna set up a great tournament.

We're gonna send them off at seven a.m. First flight comes in at three o'clock.

I've heard fish has been kind of spotty, depends where you're gonna go, but I know these boats will find 'em, and these are some great teams.

So three o'clock this afternoon, we're gonna have a weigh-in.

We're gonna do a great job and looking forward to some great baskets.

- Good morning, we're in Sault Ste.

Marie for our fourth stop with the Michigan Walleye Tour.

I'll tell you, she's one of these tournaments where are you gonna make the long run, or are you gonna just go and and play it safe and try to get a limit and try to get into the championship.

So our expectation this morning, we decided to stay closer.

We're not gonna make the big, long run.

We won't do that to our camera guy.

It's kinda not very nice.

But anyway, yeah, we got some stuff going around Drummond area and stuff like that.

Hopefully, we can put a limit in the boat and maybe tomorrow, swing for the fences.

- Today is day one of the Michigan Walleye Tour.

We're out here on Sault Ste.

Marie.

Got pretty nice weather conditions.

It's gonna be pretty calm today.

Hopefully, a little bit of wind picks up later in the day, but gonna be high sun and calm for the run of this morning.

So got a little bit of a boat ride ahead of us, but it's gonna be good conditions.

So hopefully, the bite's pretty active this morning and we can put a limit in the boat pretty quick, so.

(upbeat music) - There we go.

A good way to start 'em.

Not the biggest, but we're gonna take it.

All right, John Balla from Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

We're out here on the St. Mary's River in Sault Ste.

Marie, Michigan for the fourth stop or the Michigan Walleye Tour 2025.

We're sitting in eighth place on team of the year right now, about 23 points behind a couple of hammers that are up in first place.

So we're gonna need probably a top couple places to even have a chance at winning team of the year.

But if we project out the points to make the championship, which is the top 40th, the one fish we caught this morning already, first thing this morning, should have put us in the championship.

So we're excited about having that one fish, but it's certainly not gonna be enough for us to do what we wanna do, which is our goal is to win this tournament.

So yeah, sitting in eighth, looking forward to a nice long day ahead of us.

Caught some nice fish in practice.

Things are looking good.

We just need things to go our way.

- [Dean] He's all over him.

He just came back for you.

Got 'em.

Fish on!

- [Billy] All right, I got 'em.

- [Dean] That's a good one.

- One more.

A little more.

(grunts) Good job.

- [Dean] Oh, he just got off.

(laughs) That's awesome.

- [Jeff] Nice job, buddy.

- Good job.

That's a nice long one.

It's skinny, but that'll work.

All right, so we talked earlier.

I'm from Illinois.

Dean and Ryan are from Wisconsin.

You might be wondering, why are we fishing the Michigan Walleye tour?

Well, the reputation of the tour preceded itself for sure.

We heard so many good things about it by some friends of ours that are fishing it.

Now, after four tournaments now, we've had a chance to really feel, get a feel for what goes on with the planning, the registration process, the rules meeting, all the correspondence for the information.

It's absolutely tremendous.

We've had the luxury over the course of 20 or 30 years of fishing tournaments all over the country, and I can tell you, this is like one of the best run circuits that we've ever fished.

I mean, we get correspondence and texts when we're supposed to be at the rules meeting.

When are we supposed to be at the takeoff in the morning?

What time is our check-in?

They're really steadfast with sticking to the rules, which is awesome.

That's a breath of fresh air.

They say a rule, they stick to it.

It's black and white.

The competition, first and foremost, was the reason why we really wanted to fish this.

They have some of the best talent for fishermen in all of this, not just Michigan, but in this Upper Midwest Great Lakes area.

And we wanted to challenge ourselves.

These guys are not easy to beat at all.

- [Billy] Got 'em.

- I was gonna say, how am I not getting bit?

- Go ahead and cast, Ry.

I got it.

- I'm like, how am I not getting bit?

They're all following me.

A little technique, what we're doing today, we're actually LiveScoping, something different for us.

We're usually, I'm a big troller, big open water troller, but I got Garmins this year, and we're doing the LiveScoping.

That's amazing.

One thing that's really helping us in the LiveScoping, is how we can shade our depth, and we'll show you that on a picture later.

But we're shading our depth, and we're fishing from eight to 20 feet of water.

And the reason why we shade our depth, there are so many reefs out in this spot, and we just keep jumping from reef to reef to reef.

So we got a couple of fish in the box, and we've only been fishing not even an hour yet.

And hopefully, they get a really nice limit, and go in.

And I know John talked about it, but angler of the year is probably out of reach unless we get a couple big ones.

But we're gonna be after 'em, and this should be a great day.

- So we're in like about 16 feet of water.

I'm shooting out a hundred feet.

We're fishing weeds that are anywhere from eight to 10 feet tall.

And we've been finding some bigger fish, some heavier fish in the weeds rather than the rock.

And the fish have been hanging around like the midpoint in the weeds, and we're able to use LiveScope to pluck 'em right out of the weeds.

I'm not seeing as much activity as we'd like right off the bat, but once the sun gets high in the sky, it should warm these fish up and get 'em active, so it's only a matter of time until this spot starts going.

- I got my son with me and my brother, and we just kinda, we kinda did it this year just to do it with the three of us just for fun.

We kinda stunk in some of the tournaments so far.

We have semi-decent pretty fish, but it hasn't panned out.

A little different pressure with the home water 'cause you have so many spots.

And you don't wanna jump around all day, but at the same time, there's so many guys that come south now down to detour that it's hard to have unique spots or spots to yourself.

So right now, we're just...

This one, we have all alone.

And sometimes a spot really bangs, and well, hopefully that'll happen as the day warms up.

While angling here, if you ask all these guys, they're gonna say it's pretty tough, which it is.

We go to different places, and we're confused, and this one's probably more confusing than those if you don't live here.

But I mean, there's 10-pound fish here, but our typical good fish here is a seven, eight pounder.

And there's a lot of five pounders, but it's fishing.

You gotta get 'em.

But our salmon fishing, Atlantics and other fishing has really came back too.

So walleyes had better years than what it's been the last few years.

There's fish here.

It's just a matter of getting on 'em.

But overall, the fishery is amazing.

I mean, there's probably not many places like it.

- Oh, my gosh.

It was like a six, a six and a half.

- [John] Yeah?

- [Billy] Yeah, yeah, he was right there.

He wasn't ready to be netted yet though.

(upbeat music) - Well, it started off pretty good this morning.

We got to our first spot and first cast, caught a fish, put 'em in the live wall, and caught one other one there, and went to plan B, and got here and saw a ton of fish, and moved around and caught one here.

I think we have three in the live wall right now.

It's just about noon.

We're kind of behind schedule kinda what we thought our game plan was gonna be.

By noon, we were hoping to have a limit.

But it is calm.

I mean, it's a little flatter, and it's a little tougher, and the fish aren't really biting.

And we elected to fish Canada, and we're using artificial.

I think that's hurting us a little bit.

I don't think they're real aggressive right now.

But we got a couple other spots that we're gonna probably hit, and hopefully, we can pick a fish off here and there and go in with a limit and maybe even upgrade.

- All right, so we're up here in Canada, and we're not allowed to use live bait.

So generally, we are trying to target these fish with high reaction baits, jigging raps, shiver minnows, hyper rattles.

And what we're trying to do is find these fish that are kinda more related to bottom up, cruising a little bit, casting at 'em, and really just trying to get a reaction strike.

You're really ripping 'em hard off the bottom, letting 'em fall to the bottom.

Sometimes the fish will chase it down the bottom, kinda wait for it to move.

And once you rip it back up, on the glide is when they tend to hit those again.

So next time you're out in the area and you kinda wanna trigger some fish, look for some glide baits, we call 'em.

And generally, it's because they have, like, these fins on the back that helps 'em.

After they come up, they start gliding down and kinda make it really enticing to a fish.

It triggers a lot of bites, a great alternative to live bait.

- [Jeff] I'll take them!

(grunts) - [Billy] (chuckles) You dog, you.

- [Dale] Yeah, he stands tall.

Look at him.

That's a nice one.

Come on, baby.

You stand straight down.

Here he comes, JB.

- [Jeff] That's a nice upgrade.

- [Dale] Whoa!

Whoa!

- [Jeff] Good one, buddy.

- [John] (chuckles) That's a nice one.

- A couple pound upgrade.

- Heck, yeah.

That's a gorgeous one there, dude.

Good job.

Not the fattest one, but longer.

- [Dale] Probably three pounds.

- Should give us a half a pound upgrade.

Let's go check it out.

All right, so we've got five.

It's 11.

Oh, it's 1:20.

I'm sorry, it's 1:20.

We've got five for 19.15, so we're an ounce short of 20 pounds.

Just having come off probably the biggest fish of the day.

I'm gonna guess it was five pounds, five pounds plus.

But it's okay, they're biting.

We're starting to see a lot more fish over the last, like, hour, hour and 15 minutes.

We ended up coming out a little bit deeper.

I think the calmer day has these fish a little bit deeper than they were yesterday with this big, strong wind.

So we've got about another hour and 40 minutes before we have to take the hour-long ride back.

So we're just gonna keep tooling around this area.

- [Dale] Look at 'em all follow you right to the bottom.

Ryan's gonna catch one.

Three of 'em following!

I was just gonna say Ryan's gonna get one.

That's a good one, dude.

- [John] Got 'em, Ry?

- [Dale] Don't lose that one.

That's a good one.

Oh!

Please, please, God.

Oh, come on.

Oh, yeah!

Whoo!

- [John] Nice one.

Nice one, dude.

- Yeah!

- Nice one.

- [Dale] Big fish, Ryan!

- Yes!

- [Ryan] Heck, yeah, baby!

- [John] That's an upgrade.

- [Ryan] Whoo!

- [Dale] (laughs) That's awesome.

- [John] Wow!

- [Dale] Nice job, dude.

- [Billy] Steve's hooked up.

It's probably a mega sized Gobi.

- [Jeff] Yeah, it could be.

It's not doing much.

- No, it's a Walter.

20-incher.

It's just about noon.

We lost one probably six or seven pounder around 10 o'clock.

That was our first bite of the day.

We did some bouncing around, missed a couple other fish, and then we ended up just boating like a four pounder.

Right before noon was our first fish.

We had some weed fish going in practice.

And we went there this morning, and they were so hunkered down in the weeds.

We trolled them and casted 'em and we just could not get 'em to go.

And our backup spot, which was kind of a bigger area, had seven boats on it.

So those fish seen a lot of pressure, and both of our areas kinda failed on us.

So now, we're bouncing around, hitting some history spots that we know of and just trying to put some fish in the bag to stay alive for tomorrow.

And then tomorrow, regroup, come out and drop a good bag on 'em, so- - Get 'em.

- [Billy] We're gonna try and get five today and just stay alive for tomorrow is the goal.

Got two hours to do it, so.

That's a better one.

- [Jeff] Good job.

- [Billy] Was that on gold?

- [Jeff] Yeah.

A little strike of one.

- A little bit bigger, still not the ones we're hoping for.

- When we first found this spot in this area, it was mostly a trolling pattern.

All we ever used to do was troll.

And then forward-facing sonar came out and a few guys came down in, like, I think it was like 2020, 2021, with the first versions of forward-facing sonar.

And they did really well.

They ended up, like, second through fifth with active target.

And now, it seems like almost every single boat in the entire tour is using forward-facing sonar.

It's just such an adaptive way to fish where you can pretty much fish wherever you want using it.

And it's really just playing keep away with your bait from the fish, and you can read the fish.

And if you're going too fast, you can slow down.

If you're going too slow, you can speed up.

It's just, it's you against the fish rather than putting out your planer boards and just going and praying you get bit.

With this, it's all in your hands, and you can really get a lot more bites if you figure out what they want.

Oh!

Look at that quick release.

- Well, we got five in the box.

Not the five we were hoping for, but it was... Until the last hour and a half, we only had two.

So it's happy to have five, not real happy with the outcome.

We decided, like Bill was saying earlier, to hit Canadian water, which eliminated crawlers, which we've been using a lot.

Wrong decision.

Tomorrow, we probably won't do that.

But we're happy to have five.

And hopefully, tomorrow, we can get double this bag and try to move up the ladder some and make the championship.

(dramatic music) - There you go.

Great job, guys, there you go.

29.78, folks.

Those our new leaders.

Cam, Dave, and AJ, great fishing.

I'm gonna ask them some questions tomorrow about what they did.

We're not gonna talk today because I know that they'll lie to me or won't tell me anything.

Well, here we are after day one of our last event of the 30th year here at the Michigan Walleye Tour, up at beautiful Sault Ste.

Marie, on the St. Mary's River.

The Michigan Walleye tour started in 1995, 30 years ago, and the first championship was actually held right here in 1996 on this same body of water.

So we've kind of come full circle up here at the Sault and had some great fishing today.

We had 13 teams that had over 20 pounds.

And our leaders, Cameron Lackey captaining the team with 29.78.

It's a big fish.

Dale Bibbler, 7.70, and all three of our big fish on the board were over seven pounds.

Now, the other side of that is 25th place.

Our last place we're gonna pay this week is only 14 pounds.

Some anglers got 'em, some anglers didn't.

We had about 35 zeros today.

This is a tough fishery, very dynamic.

We have current.

We have lake areas.

We have mayfly hatches today.

We have lots of structure.

The fish are on good pieces of structure.

Sometimes they bite, sometimes they don't.

So do you find a good spot, sit, wait for the bite?

Or do you keep moving, looking for active fish?

That's what the anglers are trying to figure out.

Looking forward to tomorrow.

It's gonna be a great end to our 30th season here at the Sault.

Can't wait to crown a champion at this tournament, our team of the year, and the 40 boats are going to a championship.

Gonna be an exciting finish to year number 30.

- [Announcer] Special thanks to the Michigan Walleye Tour for letting us spend a few days with them.

If you would like to see how day two went and the final weigh-in, you can check out the Michigan Walleye Tour's YouTube page to see how all the anglers finished up in the beautiful Sault Ste.

Marie area.

Thanks again to the anglers and the Michigan Walleye Tour.

(laid back music) - All right, well, we are here once again in Mount Pleasant at the Wood Shop Social.

Jim Wood, chef extraordinaire.

We've got some fish we're dealing with.

What are you doing here today?

- We're gonna do a stuffed walleye.

- A stuffed walleye.

And we're stuffing the walleye with?

- Another fish.

- Okay.

How do you decide which one is the stuffed and which one is the stuffee?

Or how do you... Could you do it backwards?

Could you do the walleye inside of the salmon?

- We could.

I feel like you're overly complicating this right now.

(Jimmy laughs) But, to your point, you don't have to use any of this stuff.

You can use any type of fish, really.

You could use crab or shrimp in place of the smoked salmon.

- Okay.

- You could use raw salmon.

There's so many different things you can do here, so I'm just giving you like- - Options.

- A template.

- Okay.

Well, get us started here.

What do we do?

- [Jim] All right, so we've got some cream cheese that's at room temperature.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- And we're gonna whip that up good.

- You said you could do this with raw salmon too?

- Yeah, for sure.

- Okay.

- [Jim] Now, if you use raw salmon, you're not gonna make, wanna make a dip out of it.

- [Jimmy] Right.

- [Jim] I mean, I guess you could, but I'm rolling the dice on that one.

So after the cream cheese, and we've got some mayonnaise.

- So heart healthy.

- Yeah, sure.

- Perfect.

- Everything in moderation, Jimmy.

- Okay.

- [Jim] All right, so we've got some diced celery.

This is fresh dill.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- [Jim] Worcestershire.

Raw onion, red onion.

Fresh lemon juice.

- A little mustard.

- Some Dijon mustard.

Once again, this is just a template, if you wanna use a different type of mustard, if you don't wanna use mustard.

I would say make this recipe first and see what you like, see what you don't like.

- [Jimmy] Gotcha.

- And we're finishing it off with some dill pickle relish.

Hmm.

And we're gonna mix that up.

I like to keep my chunks of salmon as whole as I can.

- Okay.

- So instead of blend it, we're gonna fold it in.

- [Jimmy] All right.

And at this point, with the salmon already cooked, I mean, this is basically...

The dip is done, right?

- [Jim] This is the dip, yeah.

- All right, so what are we doing now, Jim?

- So we've got our walleye filets here.

- Okay.

- The outside of the fillet, the presentation side, we're gonna hit that with some salt.

We're gonna knock her over, hit that side with some salt.

All right, and then we're gonna spread our stuffing now.

- [Jimmy] Are we gonna roll 'em or just stack 'em on top of each other?

- [Jim] We're gonna roll 'em.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- [Jim] And what we're gonna do now is we're gonna take put it in the oven.

But first, we're gonna hit it with a little bit of butter.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- [Jim] Melted butter, a little bit of paprika.

We're gonna cook it until the insides cook through, so 135, 140.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- [Jim] And then it's done.

(bright music) - Thank you so much for joining us this week for "Michigan Out of Doors".

Make sure you stay tuned in upcoming weeks.

We've got a lot of great things headed your way here in September.

We'll be out bear hunting, youth deer hunting, salmon fishing on Lake Michigan with Bob Garner, muskie fishing on Lake Saint Clair, and a lot of things in between.

If you'd like to see where we are and where we're up to, you could always check us out online.

Our website is michiganoutofdoorstv.com, and we're on the social media platforms at Michigan Out of Doors TV.

If we don't see you in the woods or on the water, we'll see you right back here next week for "Michigan Out of Doors".

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With GreenStone's recreational land loans, we'll help you finance acreage of any size so you can own your own place in the great outdoors.

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- [Announcer] Closed captioning brought to you by Double D Ranch Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3) foundation working to make hunting and fishing accessible for those with disabilities.

(laid back music) ♪ When I wander far away ♪ A dream stays with me night and day ♪ ♪ It's the road that leads to my home state ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man ♪ Changing seasons paint the scene ♪ ♪ Like rainbow trout in a hidden stream ♪ ♪ White-tailed deer in the tall pine trees ♪ ♪ I am a Michigan man (soft music)