Far Beyond Driven

Wow, with all these glowing reports I must really suck. Went 5/5 from 7-8am in 65' south of Holland, full cores with mag glow spoons and J plugs - 4 mature kings and a nice coho. When that bite ended I went out deep, fished herring for a change and never had a hit. Should not have left fish, even in that bath water, to search for fish. Took one king 40' down on a J on the Sub-troll with it reading 76.7 degrees. Weird.

Charlie wouldn't hang up his cell phone to have my daughter buy a flasher with her own money at the GR show a couple years ago. I went to another booth and bought her a pile of them out of my pocket. I'll not fish before I grace that store with my presence.

Some days are just like that. Last Saturday 3/11, this Saturday 5/5.

Running hot for steel it's 3 riggers and a pile of cores on planer boards, but no divers. I've caught some on them, but trolling 3+ seems to put a pile of strain on the divers and the other presentations just work better.

Spent a lot of time out of one in Grand Haven in the day. Great boat for crawling back to after a rough Friday and crashing in the cabin. Not so great for fishing. It burned up 305's all the time as you were always pushing the motor to its limit. Did catch fish though. First time I took that guy out in my Four Winns, punched the 350 and literally rolled him right off his seat - he wasn't expecting to pop out of the hole like that. Every time after that when he was on board he drove all the time - worked out well.

Not my daughter, but my minister and his son. And if there was ever a day that swearing would have been appropriate.....

Are you using the plastic boards at the Holland station? They're brutal - I'm touching up my knife on each fish there when I can clean a whole cooler in between touch ups using a woog surface at home....

Looking for the following lost on a north troll in 80' between the sliders and Camp Geneva. 20# + king with a glow thunderstick and / or mag moonshine mongolian beef - tangled two lines and pulled them both into the wire, breaking them both off. This was after we dragged it for 40 minutes trying to pick apart a quad on kings with me and a 9 year old in the back of the boat. Big king on a 11" paddle with a mirage fly, 5/0 single gammy hook ~ 14# king on a mag bloody nose moonshine, ran the boat and got into the wire after jumping in the prop wash ??, green spinny and green fly from the DW B4K. Ended up 3 for 11 with a 17# king, 5 and 10# lakers. North troll the whole way, south troll was brutal. Quit at 9:30 as I was frustrated. Most days I'd kill for 11 hits.

I go to the freak show for entertainment value, if we catch a fish in there it's a bonus. I'm thinking of Muskegon Harbor patrol Bingo. Everyone gets a card, when you see the following you cross it off: Jigger who won't move almost getting hit by ferry. Pier fisherman lines ran over by boat. Pier fisherman flinging pyramid sinkers at boats. Guy who crash stops after running gear into rocks. Kayak trolling. Blue tri-hull Red tri-hull Yellow tri-hull Tri-hull so oxidized original color cannot be determined. Duck boat trolling. If with long shaft motor on the back, pick any other square. Pontoon boat trolling. If with grill on boat being used to cook, pick any other square. Guy solo in 12' boat or less. Guy solo in 12' boat or less running snagging gear. Boat with 14" wide landing net. 14" wide net being used. Seeing a hit on a boat before they do. Boat trolling opposite every one else. Boat running boards down the channel.

Thick bait will make the lines dance. If it's bumpy out you may not see it. Also, if you pull lures through that, it's not uncommon to snag bait on the hooks, which takes the lures out of action. On a free slider, pop the release, slam the rod back in the holder and reel like mad. You can gain line way faster reeling in the holder than you will holding the rod in your hand. In fact do this on any release-we set our rods to favor right handed people - had two hits last trip where the rod just stood up like no one was home - ran to the rod and reeled like mad, in both cases the rod loaded up, one with the fish only about 20' behind the boat.

Took out out two interns before they head back to college in a week or two. One had never been on the lake at all, the other only to take the ferry home to Wisconsin. We ended up 7/9, with a king hitting before I had the second rod set, and an absolute fire drill as the sun set, and not much in between. I think at one point we had 4 fish on at once, lost two of them, but one we landed was a 20# king, which pretty much doubled the weight of our catch as it was mostly small kings and lakers to that point. Great night out there for a short trip. One converted bass fisherman and probably parents asking their daughter where the fish came from......

My first car was an 1987 Park Avenue Ultra, and my parents have had two V-6 Lincolns that all would run 30 mpg plus on the highway due to huge overdrives but enough torque to loaf along at 1600 rpm. All three also porpoised so bad after any disruption on the highway that I was actually getting sea sick - kind of like trolling beam sea to 4' rollers in the dark.....

So I had to make an emergency trip to Ohio and the only rental I could get as a Nissan Altima hybrid. So I will say that even with my flogging it without mercy and sitting in traffic for a hour when two semis decided to mate in a construction zone, the POS kicked back 35.9 mpg. However, let's review: 1. Regenerative braking. When you get on the brakes, it's roughly the equivalent of setting up for a 70 mph sweeper in my RX-7 by downshifting to 4th and getting 2nd instead. After picking my face off the dash a couple times, I learned not to brake unless I was about to hit the car in front of me. This is a scheme to increase mileage..... 2. CVT. Really? Just pick a #@$@# gear instead of bouncing the engine through random RPM's, not that I could tell, as instead of a tach there was a dial that told me how many Kw I was using. This isn't my power meter on the side of my house, it's a #$@# car. 3. Push button start. Stand on the brake and hit a button. Not only that, but it starts in electric mode, so you're not really sure if it'll move until after you put it in gear. 4. #$@# power windows. If I want the window to go all the way down, I'll hold the button for 3 seconds. Same with up. When I let go of the switch, I want the window to stop at that point. I don't want to have to stab the button 15 times really fast to get the window to walk down in 1/8" increments to get it down 2". I will say it was fun to sneak around parking lots in EV mode and scare people. So I got back, got in my 1995 Escort GT, turned the key to start it, rolled down the window with a crank, put my left foot on the clutch and worked the easily modulated brakes, shifted based on the tach, and wailed on it as I always wail on it. And you know what? I got 36 mpg out of the last tank on that, and my 1991 with a lower final drive got 40-41......

Buddy said it was 4's with some bigger, he's in a 22' and wasn't bitching too badly about it. 6-8's would have had him running for the harbor.

I catch more fish out of my 14' each year than my 22'.....

Obviously 5 fish were pretty hard to come by this weekend. All the people that thumped their chests and said they would not enter as it was going to be too easy should have as they surely would have smoked the field.

Happened to luck into the steelies at the pier on Friday as well. We went 6 for 16 in about 2 hours, with a trail of broken off thin fish and ripped apart rapalas in our wake. Just crazy, seems that the 15# line with 12# leaders that works fine for browns is no match for a pissed off 12# steelie.

Lots of good boats struggling in the tournament this weekend. This year has been so great one day and crap the next, more than any other year. Last year it seemed it was more roller coaster. Don't be put off by the reports. For every guy posting 10-15 fish, there's lots of guys not doing jack. And those people don't pull those numbers every trip, and if they do, they don't post about it. Feel free to thumb a lift with me. I'm not great, but I can usually scrape up a few. Gas money and a notebook is all you'll need.

All: about 2 miles south of Saugy in 72' there's a detergent bottle (blue, of course) tied off to something on the bottom. Not sure whose dumb-@$$ idea this is, but we about ran a copper and wire diver through it- my crew jumped on the rods and got them clear even though we could feel the wire dragging on the rope. Did not get a waypoint, but it didn't look like it was going any where.

Swap meet, pair of Heartland rods, $30. Garage sale, three (3) Daiwa 47H reels, $30. Spool of 20# Big Game, $8. Spool of core, $12. 2 and 3 color cores working all year, yep. I don't think you need to drop that much coin, but my short cores are some of my best rods, so I would set them up. If you have a 5, I would go with a 2 and 3. Never have core at a rod tip. Just a matter of time before it breaks.

Oh I can't wait to pour gas into the boat as we hopped all over the lake this morning, and with it being calm most of it was over 40 mph. Stop #1, 1/1 with a small king. Stop #2, 0/0 Stop #3, 3/4, all lakers at 4, 10, and 11... Stop #4, 6 for eh, well, like 16 or something. Steelies are fun like that. Ended up 10 for 21 or so with 84# in the cooler. What a riot. Sorry about the lack of details; we were helping some buds pre-fishing for the Big Red.

My Subtroll always reads lower than GPS speed, even when rolling into the current. Find a number that works for you and repeat as needed. Mine spends 90% of the time parked at 2.0 but was as high as 3 today looking for steel.

If using the DNR launch mentioned above, head south a ways before turning for the channel. There's a big sand bar on the north side that sticks out quite a ways - it's got buoys on the end of it. Watch the no wake zone as you get to the channel end of the lake - the cops do. There's no structure to speak and the lake kind of rolled last night, so the fish are scattered.

No, that's a mess waiting to happen. Even with a fixed slider you've got 50-150' of line trailing around behind the boat while you're netting the fish, and if a fish runs it's towing all that behind him waiting to find other stuff. Is one extra fish worth taking down 1/2 your spread in a tangle?

"we had 9 this morning in the same water" Without details this is pretty useless