Far Beyond Driven

Water was stupid dirty at the beach in Holland last week, we went 7/8.

Caught 4 the day after Thanksgiving last year, and two on 12-4, all this trolling in 10-15' out of Holland. I know they come in earlier than that.

Back in the day of 3 king limits you almost had to party fish. If I had landed three kings and it was my turn on a fish, was I supposed to hand it off if it made a run? Or if I had three kings and the guy fighting a fish didn't, and it started jumping, should he hand it to me as it's a steelie? On a boat we just go communal. Some days my kids reel in all the fish.

We don't have a lot of walleye around here. If you have 3 guys in the boat and 13 coho in the box, and more than 6 rods out, you're getting a ticket.

It can happen in duck and goose hunting, but if you're going to shoot my birds, you'd better ask first, and 98% of the time I'm saying no. Sometimes stuff happens, you pop a hen by accident get more than a bird with one shot. Don't think all duck and goose hunters are like this, I've killed probably close to 1000 birds and have less than a couple shot for me.....

I think your kids are fine Kevin. You on the other hand......... This coming from a guy who brought bags of ice to keep the fish cold, on a river steelie trip where it never got above 20 degrees?

We had rapalas, spoons, and thin fish out. One hit on a rapala, one on a spoon, and 6 on the thin fish. Color didn't seem to matter.

My wife and I stopped rallying and bought a boat when we decided to have kids. Figured it would be safer and cheaper. That was a pipe dream......

Yep. For browns and steelies I like running as close to the beach as I can. Figure the guys flipping spawn from shore can get them, so can I. Sorry Dave Ash..... This works better when there's a little chop, but it it gets too rough the waves will break and shove you all over. Also, if your boat stalls, you have no time to set an anchor. If GH is an option I would head up there - the Grand gets 150k planted vs. 15-20 k at Holland and Saugy.

4-6' of water, thin fish and rapalas off boards tight to the boards and riggers set 2' down. We were talking the the people walking the beach. Cannonballs were jumping out of the water between waves.

We pull rods as each person limits. This really doesn't happen too often other than coho in the spring, and then you can't pull rods fast enough. With coho if they're really hot we start rail dumping the lightly hooked ones and keep the buggered up ones, switching the spread out for browns and kings (and inevitably filling out on coho any way).

Fished Holland from 12:30 to 4 with my oldest and my dad. Ended up 7/8, lost a steelie, 5 steelies, a brown and a king. Released them all as none was hooked too badly. Also picked up a mallard someone shot a little too far back that was floating in Lake Mac. Jet skiers were having a Memorial and we ended up running right through the roses that were floating on the lake. That was hard to explain to my kid.

People who don't know me think I lie a lot. Those that do wonder if I'm just destined for weirdness. So on the ride to work in the dark there's a flash and then a boom on the windshield. I stop and walk back and found a thoroughly mangled woodcock on the road. Oddly, I threw it on the floor of the backseat and didn't think much of it. Pick the kids up after work and head to church to clean. Squeaky picks up the bird and immediately thinks it's the coolest thing ever. So I'm cleaning and she's playing with it, and then I hear "I've got a problem". Apparently she decided to pick an old skeleton key lock on a cabinet using the woodcock bill, and it was stuck. I mean really stuck. Stuck so bad I had to go get pliers to remove it. Picture a mangled wood cock hanging off a cabinet by it's beak. And after that we put him away and didn't play with him any more.

Geese are flying off the unit, but with the weather the ducks were flying. We ended up getting a field with a low spot and pull 4 mallards, a widgeon, and one goose that came just a wee bit too close. Not sure what's up with all the geese leaving. Corn is in the right spots and it just starting to get cut, things should only get better with more birds and the fields being opened up.

YAD's if you can find them. Soft, but plenty tough. I won a tug of war with a shipwreck this summer, but only got a small piece of it.....

Slow, maybe 1/4 of the ducks we usually see, and they didn't want to play at all. Ended up with 5 in the decoys, one early, one hen, and two drakes and a goose that didn't make it out. At least on the ones we pulled up on, we batted 100%.

Last time we went to the beach to watch the big ones roll in (they were breaking on the third sand bar), the sand etched the windshield on my Jeep.....

Nice move on asking about the sharing info. We stumbled into a school in 12' on Labor Day weekend that no one knew about. Told one guy, he appreantly got on the phone, went out there the next morning and there were 3-4 boats working that spot. I think he got the hint after repeated calls for info never got answered.

It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in. I went looking for trouble, and boy, I found her.

More great customer service: we picked apples at Crane's on Saturday. $100 of apples, we go there to fill up for the winter, not to drive our IL plated SUV on gravel for the first time in 6 months and pick a couple apples and take pictures. My kids (granted they have had manners drilled into them) were sitting on some pumpkins. The owner comes over, starts screaming about who's kids are these and all that. They're not running around, being rude, throwing stuff, but patiently sitting. Apparently one of the stems broke off and this is tragic to a pumpkin, or so I was told. I asked her to show me the broken off stem, and it was not to be found. I asked her to prove it was my kid that broke off the stem. No answer. So I said "just add both those pumpkins to the $100 in apples I just bought. Her jaw dropped and then she could not apologize enough. My kids helped me carry all 150# of apples to the Jeep; no one there offered. Go to dinner at a place that closes at 10. Get there at 9:30. Order some appetizers, not a meal, and the waitress obviously was not happy about it. Brings in the order and starts cussing to the cook staff, who start cussing loudly enough that we can hear it. So we're cold to her, leave at 9:58 and when settling the bill, I tip her $5 on a glass of wine and some garlic toast. I point out that "you could always lock the door earlier, but you've got $5 more in your pocket that you really didn't earn." I think I'm going to order my apples on-line from now on....

So I take Squeaky out for her fifth birthday to a place she likes but I don't, as she has a postcard for a free ice cream cone on her birthday and this is a big deal. We order, so far so good. Soup comes, chicken rice with a 1/4" layer of fat floating on the top. Nasty. I go to set it on the next table and the fat spills over, all over our table. This took several trips to the bathroom to get enough towels to clean up. Amazing, none was spilled on us. Waitress grabs the cup of soup from the other table without saying a word. Food arrives, the stuff I asked not to have on my dish is all over my dish, no ranch for Squeaky. This seems to upset her. So I ask to have my meal made voer again, then give up and walk across the parking lot to a store and buy a bottle of ranch so Squeaky can have her food before it gets cold. I get meal round two, which looks a lot like round one with the stuff scrapped off (and spit added I'm sure) and start to eat when the people next to us order the nastiest smelling fish ever. Game over, we're done. Squeaky gets her cup cake to go, and we go to the Bunny Rabbit River, where she promptly ignores my warnings and plows head long into the poison ivy. We then leave, and put the Jeep in the ditch to avoid hitting someone towing a trailer full of dirt, black trailer, no lights, trailer taller than the truck. Drive out of the ditch, get home and fire up the TV to watch the B4K. While Mr. Six Shooter did a great job, my kid's coverage was limited to a quick pan of the back of one of their heads. Could not even tell which one. At least they didn't put my ugly mug on there. Go outside to get something from the Jeep, and step on the cup cake, which my girl didn't want - and gave to the cats. And that was the whole reason we went to this place in the first place. Oh well, you only turn 5 once....

If you YELL all the time, then what options do you have left when you're really angry?

I love the fish in a fish in a fish... We took a river steelie one time that had about a 6" rock bass it in, looked like a snake that just ate a rabbit.

Last year we went out in mid Octboer (6/9, steelies, 340'), twice in November, both times in 15-20' (4 lakers, 2 steelies, a brown and a coho) and once in Dcemeber, right on the beach (2 lakers, a king and a steelie). Laker season runs to Halloween this year. I'm stocking fruit wood for the smoker.

Port Sheldon does not have much of a run of fish. If you're fishing the harbor, in any wind, Holland would be the best option. Saugy doesn't guve you much room to turn around; in Holland you can spin between the arms and in Lake Mac. Buddy was out in 180-230' this morning and went 9/12 with a mature coho and 8 immature kings. The fish went deeper, a 450' copper (ouch) was their best rod.