When I first went to work for MSU's Dept. of Fisheries and Wildlife, I was hired to swim experimental gillnets off the beach at four stations in north-central Lake Michigan, as well as dive to retrieve and service offshore current meters mounted on mooring cables around the Ludington Pumped Storage Power Plant to determine zone of influence of its operation on ambient current patterns. Over the first year of swimming gillnets for a doctoral student's dissertation, it became apparent that any inshore storm that raised turbidity brought browns in tight to the beach. We fished them with a staked rod with either an air-blown nightcrawler or a spawn with "floaties" bag rigged through an egg sinker and a casting rod throwing a Mepps spinner or a sonic spoon that made a ton of "noise" via the chevron pattern of holes and adjacent ridges stamped in the flat section of the body during retrieve. We would get hits in water as shallow as 18-24" from browns that were patrolling for baitfish in feeding on all the benthic zooplankton and invertebrates kicked-up into the water column by the wave action.
