Far Beyond Driven

Took my 7 year old out in the channel again. Only seem to be able to hook up in there this year if she's along. First pass she got her first small mouth. So we had to do the fishy hand shake to celebrate that. Next pass we hooked the bottom. It fought hard but in the end it got loose. Next pass I got pushed up into the rocks by the only other boat in there, and hung up a planer board. Nope, not hung up at all, pissed off 14# hen king that at the last minute went under the boat and got both divers. Nice show for the people on the piers. Ended up not wanting to clean one fish so we gave it to some guys on the south pier to add to the one they had strung up. Grabbed ice cream on the way home and had a nice talk about good days and bad days. Yesterday was a good day.

I was dumb and stayed through the first storm. I figured the second one and the 30 mph winds that came with it were a hint from God that I should head in. 0/0, trolled back to the green can before I pulled them.

Had nice fish out in 300' Friday night. Set up in 200' Saturday morning and within half an hour we were looking up at waves, this from a 22'. With them building and pushing us offshore, we pulled up and ran into Muskegon Lake and strained the weeds out with our gear. I didn't take pictures; I don't want State Farm to know what I do.

Buck is a mature male king, hen is a female. Usually the bucks run up first and claim their spots in the river and wait for the hens to show up, so this should just be the advance guard with the bulk of the herd still waiting.

Woke up at 5:30 and hooked up the 14' to try in Lake Macatawa. Made some toast and fell back asleep and at 7:30 my 7 year old was poking me with her finger trying to wake me up to go. Oh, yeah, let's do that. So we launched at 8 and made a couple laps in Mac. Nothing going. Channel didn't look too bad, about 1/4 way down rigger started bouncing. Figured it was a sheep, so I flipped it off the release and handed it to the kid. She reeled in a hot little 4# buck. Got him in the net and the two color fired. She had all kinds of fun with this one, ended up being a 10# buck. Turned around and back towards Mac and the one color fired with a 13# buck. Two more laps and nothing, hard rain started, just about pulling them the one color fired again. This one tore off 150' of line, jumped, and threw the lure back at us. Went back out at night ended up 0/1 on a one color off a board. Current was all kinds of wicked, 0.0 mph up the channel and 5.4 mph down it. Never seen that before and I spend a lot of time in there.

Lake was hot this year but the thermocline never went stupid deep. Only time I went over 100' this year was in May, and I haven't been skunked since a January trip on the Grand. Last year I spent about a month straight with mag wire divers on one at 200' -350', riggers all in triple digit land and a copper and full core with snap weights mostly getting in the way.

Lures can't catch fish if they're not in the water. Have your stuff sorted out and ready to go, don't motor out to the spot and then start digging out one lure at a time and set one rod at a time. Get the core far enough out that it will pull on clicker, get a diver started and set it to spool out on clicker, and then set a rigger while those pull out. Third WMFL event I had 6 rods set by myself by 5:09 and we had fish #4 on by 6. I went out with a guy on time and literally watched 50 fish landed in the herd around us at the harbor before he had 4 rods out. Went 2/2 on a day where the kings were so thick in the piers the graph looked like a store demo. We had a day I knew it was going to be an early bite only. Went 6/6 in the first half an hour and caught one fish in the next 5. We were throwing fish on the cabin floor to get them out of the way. Febreeze is good stuff.

Tie your hook harness to a 2' leader of 40# mono. Tie a loop knot on the end of this. The plug can ride up the line and not open the swivel, and you can slide plugs up over the loop to swap them over.

Sunrise, orange mongoose, silver orange ladderback, freezer burn, bloody canary, Craig's Christmas. Oh, you mean kings and not sheepies?

Mine. Don't need to shell out $5 for something I can tie better than store bought for about a buck with a single gamakatsu and a FC leader. Also pretty cool to pop fish on stuff you made yourself.

Grand Traverse Bay we fish 500-600' in the 14' and it's a rifle shot to shore. Coming from the barren flat lands down here it's hard to get used to watching the graph cycle up and down so much.

I'm good with Big Game too. Run the 15# and hardly ever break off fish, even in the river. If that's the same rod that keeps doing this, take a Q-tip and run it around all the guides. One may have a small nick in it that's cutting the line - the cotton will snag and show you where.

I usually tell my driver to keep the sub-troll rod straight behind the boat. That was not a possibility yesterday and I spent 90% of the time at the helm just trying to keep the pointy end going where I wanted. Great job to those who got on them. We didn't.

Nice cooler. Hope you feel bad probably taking the WMFL trophy away from my daughter..... (Never mind the two one fish weigh ins I've had this year) I figure if I'm going to lose for the year, I'd really like to lose to a great guy who takes pictures and posts how he caught the fish.

Nice ride. Don't see many of those and that's a shame. Buddy wanted one and ended up with a Tiara as he could not find any in the area. This boat was in the 30-32' range. If you're ever willing to trade for a 22' Four Winns let me know. Good on gas and all that!

Boat was in 115' about half way between Holland and Port Sheldon. Do you have yellow / gold lettering on the back of your boat?

Sorry about that. I think you may have been in the area as we passed you just before we motored down at the scene. But then I was working the GPS, the radio, and hammering around in the chop at 37 so I wasn't paying too much attention to the other boats other than to no run over their stuff. We ended up 4/4 from 7:30 to 9 before we pulled them due to a chummer. That sounds great but the first rod was in at just before 6.....

Nice job. Props to "Caught in the Moment" who stood down, pulled lines and came to the assistance of a sinking boat during the tournament.

At cruising speeds the give way boat should give way to the boat that has right away, regardless of size. I'm amazed that how many people push me around in my 14' just because it's a small boat. But then, I'm amazed how many people think I don't know what I'm doing as it's a small boat.

You didn't farm them, you "Best Chanced" them to ensure better fish in the box. Don't know what's worse, getting on fish and not landing them, or going like 3/3 without ever sorting out the pattern than day.

Need more hooks on that board for holding fish if you keep pulling coolers like that. Nice!

Jim: we didn't tie for last, we tied for 22nd....... FBD, Holland, MI

10 years ago I bought a heavy deep V with a cabin and 260 horsepower so I could fish in about any conditions I wanted to. And then I did. Yesterday with my 7 year old daughter on the boat, we turned tail and slugged back into port without setting lines. Bounced her around in the cabin like a pinball. I think 21 out of 60 boats put fish on the board. Got to assist the Coast Guard two years ago with a sailboat that got hit by lightning on Lake Mac and went down so hard the keel was buried in the mud in the bottom. Picked up a crew member and then spent 15 minutes tacking downwind looking for his sandals (which we did find both of - not sure why that was such a big deal to him after getting pulled out of the lake). Great time though.

Three days, three limits. Gotta like that.

Flipped back through my logs, in the last three years (and about 450 fish) I've lost two fish at the back of the boat. One would think boats that land 1000's of fish a year could do that well.