Far Beyond Driven

25 years from now he'll be taking you out with his kids......

Let's be honest, what you bring to the table is directly related to your place on my invite list. Cover my bill when I suck? Up you go. Don't bitch when I ask you to fish lakers in a cold rain since I'm prefishing in June? Moving up the list. Puke your guts out in a tournament but refuse my offer to leave fish to take you in? Way up the list. Fish all morning with a spoon hanging out of your hand as we're on fish? Impressive. Bill bob hook set two wire diver hits in a row and make no offer to get out of the Jeep when I stop at Gold Coast to get replacements? Hmm, I've got poor cell coverage. Brag to your friends on the cell phone about how well you're doing. Well.... Tell me where to fish and what to run after I pulled a 2 hour limit the night before - well, you might watch me from the pier heads. As I've gotten older and money isn't so tight, it's becoming more and more of what you bring, how well you help, and how much I enjoy your company.

Funny thing is if I had the Four Winns I would have blown out of the pier heads in half an hour and gone looking for lakers. Completely blind squirreled this one as I've taken three browns this spring and spent plenty of time looking for them. Going to need to find some fish of size for the youth tournament in 2 weeks.

Cleared the piers and dredge buoys at 5:20 with my daughters as a crew in the row boat. Ran to Saugy, well, almost got there by 6 in hopes of bait (some) and steel (none). Not wanting to run to 60' and look for lakers, we phased out the steel stuff and switched over to brown stuff, and finally got a pattern going with mixed veggie small spoons on the 2 color cores right on the bottom in 10-12' in the dirty plume water just north of the piers. Didn't mark a fish in the clear water. We were cycling though the rods non stop due to all the junk in the water. At the end, I was down to just 4 boards and still by the time I got the last one clean, the first one would have the lure on the top spinning. I didn't sit down for the last 3 hours and probably set 50 planer boards today. Ended up pulling them at 11 so the kids had time to climb the dune on the way back to port. We were 9/11 with 6 ~ 4# browns, one lost at the net, one slightly bigger broken off in the prop wash, and three really nice sheepies that got our hopes up.

Screw it, Four Winns didn't start, so I'm fishing in the 14' again. I probably will not be launching at the DNR launch, so I'll grab my lures at the weigh in. With 15hp I need to launch as close to the piers as I can......

Come on Dave, at least let me run the Four Winns first before I make up my mind.

Just got off the water with my 10 year old. Don't let any one tell you girls can't fish! Got a life jacket for her yet

My daughter wakes up Saturday morning, looks at the shore, looks at me, looks at the shore, looks at the depth finder, sand says: "pretty far out for this little boat, isn't it" and promptly pulls the parka back over her head and goes back to sleep on the floor. All and all a pretty good weekend if you could stay on the fish. Thanks for the details.

A row boat with a 9 mph top end (actually never saw more than 7.4 mph this morning, lots of gear in the boat) is not effective as a tournament boat, unless the fish are at the piers. I've said many times if there was one fish at the piers, I'd get him. This morning there was one 6# king at the piers, and we got him. And that kept us there until 8 am, when we pulled them and ran out deep. Well, more like jogged out deep. Heck, I run 5k's at a faster clip than my boat was going this morning. Dropped back in at 70' and missed a nice rip on a Mag SS lemonberry on a free slider down 50. Then took a nice 12# king on a Mag SS u of M frog thing off a full core. 4# king on the free slider followed. These were spoons my daughter, who was on the net today, won at the Lakeshore Outfitters seminar this spring. At 10 we were desperate for fish so we started drilling the bottom for lakers and pulled a 4# and 11# in the next hour to get our 5. Apparently the league had changed to weigh 6. We figured this out on our jog back in when I asked my friend to confirm if it was a noon or 1 pm quit time. So needing another fish instead of an upgrade, we went back to the piers thinking that was more likely than finding a brown, only to find the traffic too crazy to try. Hence we worked north up the beach for browns, but only had about 20 minutes before we timed out and had to jog back in. Not sure how my cooler fared, but with my daughter on the net and limited in the gear we could carry, I think we recovered pretty well when the piers didn't pan out. My count was ~ 77 points and my scale is usually pretty close.

Far Beyond Driven is in. Kids are crewing for me. In the row boat. "just hard to get 10,000lbs of boat going with one engine." My 14' tops out at 9 mph with a full crew. Needless to say if the fish are out in 140' we'll be leaving at about 4 am to get there in time.

We were never more than 100 yards from the pier heads, other than when fighting doubles and triples we just let the east wind serve as an autopilot and take the boat away from shore. The the 14' once we hook a fish I tend to crazy Ivan the boat around and go right back through that spot. End up with fish in front of the boat, under the boards, and all over, but you can't lose what you don't hook.

No bait marked, but the fish were plenty full of multiple sizes.

eptember.

Your narrow minded attitude is toxic to the healthy and diverse fishery of our lake. Ask charter captains what they thought about lakers and steelies during the BKD crash. Ask Best Chance what they thought about browns when they won the Grand Haven tournament on them as nothing else was working for anyone. I personally can go out and catch a trout of some kind on any day I can get a boat out on the lake, year round. If there were only kings and coho, my season would by from mid April to September.

Got to the channel at Holland in time to watch the Steelheader's take off, and then dropped lines in their wake. Had my 6 year old and a friend crewing in my 14' as a last minute trip was put together. Never left the pier heads, closed the cooler at 10:45 with 136# of fish, 8 mature kings, an eater king, 5 coho and a brown. Big fish was 18# and several 15's. Would have been done at 9:30 but my 6 year old had a case of the dropsies and ended up wearing 5 shrimp of shame necklaces (a plastic shrimp you have to wear when you lose a fish). Love fishing the piers, especially when no one else is in there.

Launched at what I think is the city launch. Had the front axle of the Jeep in the water and had to push the boat off and walk it out. This is a 14'. There was a twin axle trailer in the launch and we met a ~ 22' coming in as we were heading out. How they launched that, I don't know......

Fished Pentwater north to the Bass Lake Outlet with my 9 year old this afternoon in a brtual NW wind and chop that was about the limit of what I can troll into with a 14'. Not big, but so tight that the board rods were having spasms and often 2-3 waves would be hitting / under the boat at one time. Regardless, we pressed on and were able to boat a 3# brown and a sweet 9# hen steelie, who was kind enough to announce her hit with a 50' peel on the drag.

Not sure about Atlantics. Last one I saw was in 1993.... For browns, find the warmest water you can, either a creek / river outlet, stained water, or a windward shore. Chop is good, clouds are your friend. Flat cam and a blue sky with clear water is about as bad as it gets. We fish as shallow as we need to, which some days is 15', and one day when the east wind blew all the warm water out there was still a thin band of warm water tight to the beach. We trolled with the boat on top of the first sand bar in 3-4' of water and spoons 15' off the boards on the shore side. Took a two man limit of browns and a bonus laker on 9 hits. 7 of the hits were the shore side board, which could not have been in more than 2' of water. Stick baits and spoons both work. Some people say get them way away from the boat, but in a 6-8 rod spread over 50% of my browns come on one color lead cores on the boards closest to the boat. Natural colors in clean water, brighter colors in stained water / early or late in the day.

We were south from noon - 3 and ended up with one brown. Spent two hours working my waypoints from last year that gave up easy limits of lakers to no avail. While not a great catch, got to spend the day with my wife. We made it a point to troll down to the way point where she pulled a 14# brown the day before she had our first daughter 10 years ago. The one brown we got this trip was not nearly that big....

Glass or aluminum boat? You can break a lot more ice than you would think with an aluminum boat....

Was this 2012? We were at the Platte Hatchery twice this past October and saw probably 1000 coho with none over 5#. Lots of captains I know never pulled 20# kings this year, and most tournaments and 333 contests have 13-14# averages. Never heard of pinks in any number around that area; probably jack coho, as the hatchery was full of them too. They just get whacked and thrown in a tub to be sold....

No promises here, I had my Four Winns out 7 times last year and only set lines on it 5 times. Guys, this is not a tournament. It's a fishing trip with time constraints. Don't freak out, don't go crazy. Fish your strengths based on the points needed and see what happens. The best part is, with rare exceptions, if you get your @$$ handed to you, shake the guy's hand and ask him how he pulled his cooler. Nailer told me how he beat me, and I didn't even give him beer. Sixshooter explained back in the 5am opening times how he was putting 5 fish in the box in that first hour. Both are techniques I have since adopted with success.

1.4' on my transducer in my 14' last year around Christmas time. Should have gotten better, we've had some decent non-lake effect weather this winter.

Want a six year old? Somewhat strong willed, doesn't like boats without cabins. Pretty cute though. Comes with a 4 life time supply of stuffed animals......

Trophy gentlemen's hunt today. Broke 1/2 mile of thick ice with the boat, a wee bit hairy, to get to a small open pocket on a river. Ended up passing a couple long shots and not seeing a few birds that came in, but of the 5 we pulled up on, all 5 ended up coming home with us. Drake common merganser each, buddy got a hen and drake goldeneye and I ended my season by rolling my first drake goldeneye right before hours, over my hand carved spread of GE decoys. Time to put the decoys away and worry about river steel. Hopefully without any ice to break through......