Far Beyond Driven

This is not uncommon this time of year. Are the fish skinny with big heads? No, we took a couple coho in March that were pushing 4# already. When the bait shows up, well, they'll find it. And if you find bait, stay on it....

Crap, in my 14' on my week off we caught over 70 fish on 8 gallons of gas. I can't even run out and back in my big boat on 8 gallons......

Dad and dad in law both with health issues, daughters that think that fishing is still cool. That and who knows how many more years we'll be blessed with the fishery we have. Not to mention the coho fishing has been stupid this year. 7 trips, 90 fish......

You can untie the back rope on a trolling bag and let it swing around to keep the pointy end into the waves too. We overheated in 6' trolling for browns one year, didn't set the anchor right away, as I messed with the engine we ended up over a bar and spanking the I/O on the sand with each roller. Finally had to just fire up the engine even though it was at 220 and run down the beach until I found a break in the bars and could get back out to deeper water. Looked down and the heat had dropped - was a bad impeller. #$@# merc impellers, buddy with an OMC never has this issue.....

You need an anchor, about 7 times times the depth in line, and with the zebra mussels on the bottom a couple feet of chain in front of the anchor saves the rope and gets a better bite. On an east wind, if anything happens, get the anchor set right away before you drift through the pack. Trolling for browns on a west wind, if anything happens, you have about 2 minutes before you're in the surf. Most days no big deal. If it's breaking on the bars, you're pretty much dead. I've helped pull boats or what was left of boats out of the rocks in St. Joe as they didn't think they needed an anchor. Also know a guy who got to watch his tender boat drift away while layout hunting in Lake Erie as they didn't have an anchor. Pretty sick feeling when you're all by yourself on Lake Erie and your mother ship floats away.... Just because it's not required, doesn't mean you don't need it. Now that I've got a couple little kids, I pretty much can count on three fingers the number of boats I'll ride on out in Lake Michigan, two of which are mine.

They planted a new and special strain last year that's supposed to save the brown trout fishing, and these are clipped. I don't know why they didn't just plant the same ones they planted the year before that, we caught 38 browns last year and all but 2 were 2-4# fish from the year before. Oddly, some of those were fin clipped, so we're getting browns from other states over here. The 5-10# fish we're seeing this year are the results of that 2009 plant.

Themz Kopper Smelt are not cheap.... I've got one, dragged the hell out of it and have caught two coho on it. May be inclined to sell it at a discount.

Forged on my own for the Brown Blast after fishing with Mull for three years, this turned out to be good as he had to cancel at the last minute. Also was the earliest I've ever pulled out the Four Winns, and the first time she's fished St. Joe. Crew was on time, daughter got up fine, tow down was uneventful (first trip in the Four Winns each year something goes wrong - every year). After two years ago barely getting 5 coho and last year only having 3 fish, we ripped down to the cement wall at 42 and set up all 9 rods with a mix of brown and coho lures. Didn't even get the whole spread in and we were 5/8 in probably 5 minutes. Landed 4 more coho right after that, each bigger than the last, and boxed those. Losing room in the cooler in a hurry, we punched the throttle up to 5 mph and pulled all the lines. I'd never caught a fish on a Bomber in the spring, but I knew Sixshooter's big king last year came on one, so we put 4 of those on a shore side and 4 small spoons for browns on the outside, and were just about to swing the boat around and scrape the shore for browns when a yellowbird just wandered out of formation. I grabbed it and tripped it, and then the water out back exploded. Before we could react a big "V" went across the back of the boat, getting the rigger rod and a 1 color on the other side and spinning it all up, and then it ran straight back to 400'+ on the counter. L action rigger rod, 10# leader, and a big king with a pile of gear I cannot move. We knew this fish was the one we needed, so we cleared what we could, backed the speed to a crawl and slowly worked it in, picking up the tangles as they came to us. One of the outer birds still out fell back, but we just let it drag, and it came loose and pulled back into place. After some tense minutes gaining line 1' at a time with the drag backed off to nothing and my thumb on the spool, we slipped the net under a 13.2# football of a king. Sweet. Got the spread back together, released a coho, quaded on coho and released them all, and then got up on the beach looking for browns and caught 2 more coho. Pulled lines and went deep, looked for lakers for an hour with nothing going, so we ran north and worked the beach for a brown as it was much nicer in there and my daughter was cold out deep. Had one rip in there that didn't stick. King was good enough to push us to 5th, 0.2# out of 4th. Maybe should have boxed a few of those coho to sort..... Boat stalled twice at the dock jogging in the current and we had to throw ropes to get pulled in. Saprk arrestor all messed up and plugs fouled - guess I may need to run a hotter thermostat if I want to fish her in cold water. The 14' never seems to mind....... Already ahead of last year's fish count, but the average weight is a bit low this year. Maybe something to do with 100 2# coho in the mix.

Hooks or split rings? I had a rookie unhooking fish last week and he mangled the split rings all to hell and gone, ended up having the hooks fall off because of it. This sucks as the stock hooks on a thin fish are not bad.....

South Haven last week: Saturday 11/13, boxed out Tuesday 10/12, boxed out Thursday 13/13, boxed out Friday 33/48 or so, lost count, rail dumped fish so we could keep fishing So as for St. Joe being better, well, I'll argue that. Saturday we needed to find the warmer, dirty water. T/TH they were scattered in pods up and down the shore. Friday they were piled in by the nuke plant....

So, I take Dave Ash along for another coho milk run since no one else responded on time to set up a trip. Trolled an hour, had one hit, Dave loses it. OK. We were done in an hour last trip. Call a buddy, he says the fish moved south and we need to just keep chugging down the beach. Half an hour later, things went from OK to good to stupid. I think we ended up 33/48 give or take a dozen. We rail dumped anything lightly hooked so we could stay out there. Had fish hit while setting lines. Had fish hit lures trailing behind the boat in the prop wash. Just a crazy ending to a great week.

Took a new guest out of Soha this morning. Set lines at 8:30. At 10 we were 11/11 with a couple short pull backs that didn't hook up. Let 3 of the smaller lightly hooked fish go, switched over to natural lures to look for a brown. No dice, bite slowed a bunch after the change but we still pulled two more nice coho to box out. Fish were not as fussy today, and ran a little bigger. Had one choad of a coho that was a tick shy of 4#. Thin fish, thin fish, and more thin fish, gold and orange being the best. Looking for a crew tomorrow, only going to check here one more time otherwise Mr. Ash will be filling the front seat with me. Man that sounds rude to Dave, as he's actually quite an accomplished guest and I would recommend him to any one.

Gold / orange has been good, color more than plug type. 2.5 mph give or take, ~ 20' of water. Nothing out of the ordinary for coho. Odd part was this time they were not concentrated in the muddy water, but were scattered up and down the coast in little pods. We had three doubles. Forecast for Saturday keeps getting uglier and uglier for those of us in row boats.....

Hit South Haven Tuesday morning. Had the dialed in turned up a little higher than Saturday, which was good, as I was up against a time window to get back home. So I focused on the coho instead of trying to mix it up. Had 6 in the box in less than an hour, then it went cold. Two baits were hot, so we checked them, only to find grass on one and a small coho hooked in the nose swimming behind the other. Once we cleaned that up, we boxed out fairly quickly. Need a crew to hopefully repeat the above on Friday. See the "Looking for a Rider" section for details.

Coho love to twist and roll. I put on a small snap, 5' leader of 12# FC, swivel, bead to stop the planer board. Works pretty well.

Hit SoHa bright and early and cold this morning. NE winds, whatever, talking 2-3' rolling in from the NW. Plans of running the beach for browns until things warmed up were blown by the waves crashing on the sand bars and breaking outside of where I wanted to be. So we set up deeper for coho, proceeded to lose the first one. Took a while to sort out the color, direction, area and speed but we took 6 fish in the last hour, ended up throwing back #10 as it was small as we were feeling cocky, and boxed a 6# steelie to finish out . Had a football brown with three gobies in it and 8 more coho in the box, ended up with 10.6# of bright orange meat when it was said and done. Got next week off, going to be heading back if the lake allows.

Get it dyed purple and you'd be fuzznicked to the 9's. Yes, that's "fuzznicked". Lived in Flint for 5 years......

Drummond is the only place that touches my boats. Patrick is the man.

That's funny, as there's a lot of truth in it. You forgot about the lady on oxygen smoking marlboro reds while feeding in the pennies.....

Size 3, 4 or 5?

If it doesn't conflict with any other tournies, game on. I haven't had too many 100# days on kings. We've had over 100# an hour on sheepies and quit as it was too much work keeping 4 rods in the water.

Sweet. Expect to see him at the WMFL by the end of the season

My daughter has over 100 she pulled out of the river beach combing. I work in Wyoming. Drop me a PM if you want a picture of the selection - she was selling them at the Swap Meet for 10 cents a piece.

1/1 on the 'Zoo Saturday. Lots of crap in the water, was cleaning lures non-stop. Sucked as the river was looking really good. 7# buck on a blue pirate hot and tot 15' off a yellow bird.

Always looking for people to hunt the Muskegon Wastewater with me. Only thing is, if the dog ruins the hunt or if anything stupid happens with a shot gun, you'll be asked to leave immediately. I understand dogs can freak out when they are new, and we can work on that. I know my kids count on having dad around for a while, so anything dumb with a gun is not forgivable. PM me come early October.....