WaterfowlForum.Net

N. Lake Huron
31°
Winds, WNW @ 5-7, partly sunny.
57 FOW

Drove N for our first layout shoot of the year this morning.

It's gotten to be sort of anticlimactic, this business of shooting ducks from the layout.
We planned on a timeline that would get us to the boat ramp about half an hour after sunrise, so we could motor out in the daylight.
We made our way towards our traditionally successful spots, but weren't putting up many birds along the route.
As we got close to our #1 spot, we could see 4 more layout rigs set up about 1-1.5 miles north of where we would normally set.
As we approached our desired spot, we started putting up fairly decent numbers of birds, so we decided to set up, and quickly unstrapped the layout, tossed the anchor and got the sled ready to hunt.
We quickly laid out a couple lines of squaw decoys and a line of scoters, for good measure.
The birds wanted into the spot pretty badly, and in no time my partner had 5 drakes down, before it started slow down.
He eventually got his 6th and I jumped into the box and had a short wait for my first opportunity and made good.
Then it got real slow and it took another hour for me to shoot my last 5 drakes...had we wanted to just "shoot ducks" we could've been domes in 15 minutes, but It's fun to wait them out a and pick your shots too.

Will be at it again in the morning.

Deadeye_Dan is #deadon

awesome! thanks for the report

what other species do you typically see out there mixed in with these?

#sprigdrunk

Great report and pics Dan!

I just noticed the goat rodeo we made of the decoys too...it was one of those days where the waves and wind weren't co-operating with each other and I spent all my time in the layout sideways to the waves...but they weren't real tall so not a big deal.

We usually see scoters (4 white wings skirted today) and any number of Redheads and Bluebills - but they won't decoy to the sea duck rig.

Pretty birds.

DeadEye_Dan wrote:I just noticed the goat rodeo we made of the decoys too...it was one of those days where the waves and wind weren't co-operating with each other and I spent all my time in the layout sideways to the waves...but they weren't real tall so not a big deal.

We usually see scoters (4 white wings skirted today) and any number of Redheads and Bluebills - but they won't decoy to the sea duck rig.

What's the reasoning for redheads and bluebills not coming into the squaw decoys?

Well, I'm not a redhead or a bluebill, but I figure it's because they are ducks and like all ducks they know kind of where they want to go...
Typically divers feed in water 8-20' deep in my experience, and squaw and scoter prefer water 30-60' deep for their preferred food sources.

So just like you may see wood ducks passing within sight of your decoys in the marsh, or mallards over your diver spread - they are heading to where they want to go and really don't give you a good opportunity.

I don't know if they can tell by the color of the water that it's deeper than they want to be (killed a lot of divers in the brown water at Sag Bay and Munuscong and plenty at Houghton...but sea ducks are blue water birds) or what. I can count the number of divers we have killed over the sea duck rig on 1 hand over the past 5 years.

It's a rare day that we hunt up North that we don't see 10-20k bills/reds, they go over at 1,000 feet high headed in towards the shore to feed...probably put up 3,000 within 1/2 mile of the boat ramp on the way in yesterday.

If we set in near shore maybe they would decoy to the squaw rig, but I have no clue. Our rigs are built to hunt a very specific way...and dropping 10lb pyramids with 100' of dangle is way to much work to hunt 8' of water.

Thanks. Was just a little curious because I mainly target the shoreline divers just based on the gear I have. But as I'm sure you know later in the year squaw hit the bay here pretty heavily and we have a few lines of squaw to put off to the side of the divers. Just don't know if the 2 has teritorial conflicts or whatever that might push the other ducks away from the squaw lines.