[piketroller]

Good to hear someone was about to catch some fish yesterday. I was out in the evening around Algonac and had my most frustrating jigging trip ever. The fish were biting - I got probably 25 to 30 hits. But not a single fish made it into the boat. Hitting on the bottom, hitting on the way up, hitting on the drop. Most had that sharp tick that actually feels like a bite opposed to just dragging it along their sides. Most were just complete misses, but did have 5 or 6 pop off halfway up, but even those fish weren't fighting much at all. Three different rods of varying stiffness, different colors, sharpened stingers & main hooks but nothing helped. The oddest part was I'd only get bites for the most part the first drift through an area. Go back for round 2 with either the same color or something different, and almost nothing. Finally after dark I got one to the surface that didn't fight much so I was going to boat flip it, but once I got it up, it looked to be 20" or a little bigger just laying on the surface. That's bigger than I like to boat flip with the rod, so I grabbed the line to pull it in, and it popped off when I lifted it out of the water. So that makes the first skunk of the year for me.

 

[piketroller]

Was like that for me on Monday with the majority of the fish looking, but not taking. I was solo, and still managed to boat 8 fish, but the number of brushes to hook-ups was insane!
Most likely the traffic and the fish being beat to hell would be my guess. Every time they get rolled, or hit in the head with lead it just adds to the finicky scale.
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After some reflection, I'm wondering if they were mostly light biting the head of the jig. That's the only part you can grab without getting a hook. Should have tried a chartreuse minnow to see if they were really keying in on that color or not.