Satisfaxion_Gauranteed

Fished Friday the 13th out of Port Sheldon. We finished the night 7 for 9, 5kings and 2 steelhead. It took us a while to find the fish since we don't make it this far north very often. Once we found the fish, things started happening right away. We had lines in the water from about 6pm until about 10:30pm. We handled back to back doubles and boated all 4. Two of them were smallish, 7-9lbs and both the other two were over 14lbs. Typical setup was 4 riggers, 2 dipseys, 3 leadcores. All of the hits came on glow green and glow blue 3 fly meat rigs behind white pro-chip flashers as well as green and blue moonshine lures. The fish were deep with riggers set to 65 and 75' down as well as 30#spider wire dipseys set to 1.5 with 200-240' of line out producing well. We took one rip on a full core and lost that fish, but other than that, the lead was dead. NW/SE circle pattern trolls in 110-120fow produced best. It was a good, fun, relaxing night after a tough week at work! After being blown out for the WMFL Northern King Challenge on Saturday, we came back on Sunday despit a bolt falling out of my truck brake caliper on the way up Sunday am. After arranging an emergency tow vehicle to get us up to Port Sheldon, we made just in time to fish the event. We finished 3 for 8, which was a little discouraging:(, but still fun. All of our hits came prior to about 9am and flies with glow tape blue prochip flasher and blue spin doctor produced 5 of the hits while the Northern King spoons produced the rest. The green dolphin spoon boated our largest king, right around 10.5lbs, while the blue bubble spoon and blue blue spinny took the other two fish. All of our hits came on lines running deep and the dipsey and rigger bite was best. We did not notice any one troll direction being better than the other. 100-120fow was best, but at about 9am, we lost the marks on our sonars, so ventured out to 140fow where the marks came back, but no takers. Typical setup was 4 riggers and 2 dipseys with the intermittent leadcore being traded for a rigger from time to time. I think our speed combined with the current was the main culprit in our poor hookup percentage. The currents were brisk, so the lures would have had a wierd angle and weird flutter in the water, which could throw off the fish attacking the lure. We did not experiment with troll speed very much, but probably should have. Overall, a very good time and fun weekend. Off to Muskegon next weekend for the Dreamweaver Challenge!

80-90fow just north of the piers......sounds exactly like the area the fish were last week out of South Haven. That's one of my 'go to' spots for July and August fish out of South Haven. Good work on the fish and thanks for the report.

I generally use Willis knots to run my braid and leaders into the leadcore sheating. All of my core and Spider Wire dipsey rods have mono as the first thing on the spool. I find using a little bit of mono provides a smoother operating drag, which makes sense if you think about the line thickness/frictional effects and spool diameter versus mechanical advantage on the reel drag. To tie my mono to the braided lines, I'll use an Albright knot. For some other knots that pertain to fishing in general, check out the site below. I find it useful. If you click on each knot, it'll give you an animated step by step guide to tying a knot. Animated Knot Guide

Thanks for the report. I've heard pretty good perch reports out of S.Haven lately.

WOW, if I would have heard about Sealine LC's for $60/apiece, I would have bought a half dozen! Good shoppin'!

I went with those perfect 2-6lb griller sized cohos! They are good. I like to marninate them overnight, too. However, I'm going to give frying up some lake trout a try now. I just happen to have some from my last trip out.......

My wife will be with me for the August event simply because it's the last day of our vacation and because she wants to go out with us during at least one event.

My Daiwa Sealines handle my line counting chores best. I've used a couple of others and not had great success with them. Those Sealines are smooth and robust. I'll be adding a couple more of them. Of my whole bunch of reels, I've got 5 different reels from 5 different companies. For my non-linecounters, I love my Penns! I also don't have anything bad to say about the non-linecounting Daiwa Sealines I use. The vast majority of the reels in use on my boat are Daiwa and Penn. Maybe down the road I'll try to get my hands on some of those Tekota reels to try out. But in the near future, my budget likes Penn and Daiwa reels.

I use 10lb finned balls on my back manual riggers. They work pretty well, but I don't generally fish those deeper than 50-60' down. When/if I upgrade those to electrics, I'll jump to 12lb balls. My side electric riggers are the finned balls and are 12lbers. I really like them. I have not had any tangle issues with any of the riggers, so I haven't had a need to experiment with bending the fins to push the balls farther to the side of the boat. Overall, I like the fact I don't get much blowback on my 12lb balls and the fins help keep the cable from twisting while I'm setting lines. I also switched to red balls for the 12lbers. I like the place for clips out on the fins of the balls. This is a great place for a poor mans thermocline finder(fancy thermeter that tells you depth and temp--$4). While fishing deeper than ~50-60' with my 10lb balls/manual riggers is not ideal, the electric riggers/12lb balls fish down to 80,90, 100' without issue. There is deffinately a difference is fishing flexibility between the two setups. I know most of you guys use the cable style releases. The last two years, I've switched to running my releases right off the balls and my hookups have improved. I'm not sure if it's the releases or me getting better as a fisherman or........... At the same time, I started running heavier balls. I'm sure that has some effect, too.

I'm pretty easy going with the nets and everything, but 17 is alot for one port! Is there really a need for 17??!!?? My fishing trip this year will be altered to pass on Manistee. It'll also keep going past the casinos. Is there a site that explains all the laws/regulations to the nets? Fines/penalties on violations?

Ya, my Uncle took some pictures on his digital camera. He's going to email them after they get home to Kentucky, either tonight or tomorrow. I'll post as there'll be a couple of good pictures. I also have some from some previous trips on my disposable camera on the boat. I'll be developing them after the WMFL trip this weekend.

Fish South Haven with 2 newbies from Kentucky(do they even have lakes in KY??) on Saturday morning. We finished 5-10, but that's really good considering having newbies onboard. My 10year old cousin got his first King, although it took him a while to get the hang of calming down and cranking the handle instead tightening the drags inadvertently. That cost me a couple flasher/fly combos..... Anyway, the best luck for us was in the 80-90fow area. White prochip flashers/white fly combos produced well along with a green spin doctor with blue and white three fly meat rigs. Spoons were not overly productive for me, but I will give honorable mention to the half core with a Fishlander chipmunk spoon as it has consistently producing a few hits over the last couple of weeks. Most of the fish were between 10 and 14lbs with the largest of the day a nudge under 15lbs. NW/SE trolls seemed to work well. We were running at about 2.8-3mph SOG. All hits came in the upper 50' of water with the 35-45' depths working best. Typical setup was 10lines in the water, two riggers with flashers/flies, two riggers with spoons and fixed sliders, two dipseys with meat, two full cores which did not produce a single hit, and two half cores. Predictably, the early morning bite produced best. Fishing slowed way down for us around 10am.

Generally speaking, I use 20lb Berkley big game for my rigger rods. If the fish are acting ball shy, I'll run long leads behind the balls and utilize flashers and sliders. If the spoon comes with a ring, I leave it on. I generally use 30lb snaps with in-line barrel swivels.

Great pictures! Dirty Dog fighting that fish looks like a little boy on x-mas morning! Thanks for the report

Flashers/flies were the hot ticket for me on Tuesday night. White and blues tended to perform well. The only spoons I got to fire were off of the half cores. Overall, dipseys and riggers performed best for me. I did not fish last night, but did stop and talk to one guy at the ramp who said he did well with a blue bubble spinny/fly combo, glow green/white fly off a green spinny, and a blue killer spoon. He was fishing in 60-80fow. I don't remember if he said 6-10 or 8-10. He had 2 or 3 fish at the cleaning station that had very good size to them with a couple of others in the 6-10lb range. If we get going on a pattern, I'll give ya a shout on the radio. Good fishin'

I don't recal my gps locations, but we started about two miles north of the pier heads and 80-100fow was most productive. I'll be on the radio(channel 10), so if you want to help have fun with the new bf, you can call up Queto I'll reply Unless you were going to show him your 'take the date into a wavy L. MI to see if her top would flip off" trick......... Good luck fishing in the morning. It sounds like the fishing has picked up nicely up and down the coast. My intent is to splash the boat at 5:15am, but with two newbies going with me, sometimes there's a little extra time added. Do you know if that Walmart is open 24hrs? I asked to make sure the two guys going with me stopped at a store today to get 1 day fishing licenses, but I haven't heard if they did. I hope so, but........

Nice report! Good work on the fish.

Thanks for the report.

Ya, the fishing is starting to pick up nicely. The lake is showing signs of seperation, too! I think we're in for a good trip Saturday morning. I normally monitor channel 10, but every now and then I'll jump to 12 if I have a longish conversation with another boat so I don't tie up the air waves. We did get somebody trying to get a hold of us last night, but we were fighting a fish and as soon as we got reset, the rod fired again. Then, honestly, I forgot to reply after the excitement My first name is Jason, and the boat name and screen name are the same.

We fished South Haven Tuesday night after work. Fishing was good and consistent. There was only two of us onboard, so our typical spread was 6 lines; 2 cores(ussually 5 color), 2 dipseys, and 2 out and downs. We had lines set by ~5:45 pm. In the next hour, we boated two very nice fish over 15lbs. The first came off a white pro-chip flasher with white fly. The second came on a half core with a Fishlander Chipmunk spoon. This spoon has been pretty productive for me this season, although the 17lb king that hit this bent the spoon about 45 degrees out of whack. We kept her bent as a lucky keepsake. The time between those two and about 9pm, we ended up with a 2 man limit in Kings and finished the night 7-10 with one laker being adding to the catch. All of the fish except for the above mentioned half core fish came on the white pro-chip flasher off the rigger down 45' and the dipsey set on 1.5 back 120' with a blue/white spinny and blue/white 3 fly herring rig. North/South trolls were most productive. We were getting very good fish marks in the same areas we got hits, which was 80-100fow about 2 miles north of the pier heads. The surface temp was ~60degrees with the water temp falling to about 50 degrees right around 40' down. In talking to a couple guys at the ramp, the consensus was that fishing out of South Haven has steadily improved over the last few days with reasonably consistent action. Get our and fish!

I've run them all at the same time from various manufacturers with success. If you're finding a speed and direction combination that works, then stick with that and use the lures you feel good about. I'm beginning to think more and more that the speed and direction of the spread is as least as important as the lure selection in the water.

The Vineyard is good and not nearly has hectic to get in and out of as Clementines. I completely agree on the Thirsty Perch. I tried it twice and both times though the quality of the food was poor, particularly for the price. The place I'm talking about is still open and not on North Beach. It's in downtown, just south of Pheonix, and either the last or second to last stoplight before the hill if you're heading west. It's a diner type of atmosephere and they do not have a liquor license(wish I would have known that the first time around). They do have very good food though for very reasonable prices and I still frequent the place.

I didn't strategically manage to get my wife's top off on our first date! Very clever! We partied the night away in South Haven and had a good time on our first date. We started out by eating at the little Italian eatery a block west of Clementines(Giovani's maybe??) That's a good place and I highly recomend it. That was 1 month short of being 5 years ago.

Thanks for the heads-up, Mike. I was thinking I may try in and around the river line out of South Haven to see if we can get anything going. I'm just anxious to blow out of work and get out on the lake!

South Haven gets most of my attention. I generally make it there at least once a week unless the West Michigan Fishing League has a tournament that week, then I'm normally where the tournament is at. South Haven is where my wife and I went on our first date. It's got all the hotties:D The fishing is normally pretty good, too. Plus, not too bad with the boat traffic.