Far Beyond Driven

Saw one other boat on the river. 1 eagle, 2 confused bluebirds. Had to work for it but pulled a small hen off the head of a flat on a blue hot and tot 40' out on the down rod. Line froze on the reel and pulled her in hand over hand. Never hit 15 on Saturday. At least I didn't have to spud my frozen crappie out of the ice before going home like my buddy did.

You need three lures on the 'Zoo: 1/4 ounce hot and tots in firetiger, blue pirate, and gold black back red lip. Run the blue pirate in the fall / winter, the fire tiger as it warms up, and the gold any time you're on the river. Set the plugs to run within a foot of the bottom. This will be learned by trial and error. Chug upstream as painfully slowly as you can. As mentioned above, cover the whole river. The little buggers can be anywhere. Last trip we pulled one out from a log jam on a flat, one in the middle of a 12' run, and one right up against the bank on the outside of a bend in about 3' of water on a sand flat with no structure. For every 10 times a rod dips, 9 of them will be logs. You will lose lures. And that 10th time, well, game on. I'll be out tomorrow hoping that the fair weather crowds that popped up last weekend are back hiding under the covers. Got about 4 more weekends before the aluminum hatch shows up and it's time to give up. Haven't seen a boat / snowmobile / hunter / truck / any body on my last three trips, and that's why I'm out there.

Fished Holland this morning. Stayed out front until that emptied out and then a while longer. Lost one nice king on a green glow J 20' down right behind the boat. Headed down the channel and into Mac at about 9:30 and found a school in Mac in 68 degree water top to bottom. Oh well, not asking why. Between then and noon went 6/10 with a 9# sheepie, and kings at 13, 14, 17.7, 18.3 and a pig hen of 19#. I haven't broken 17.5 since August 2006 and then we beat that three fish in a row. We also took about a 100# 6' log water logged timber off the bottom on a wire diver. That was, well, interesting. Thundersticks off the one and two colors were hot along with green and yellow J's, mostly on the divers. I think we landed one on a rigger. Two of the fish were pretty fresh, two were a little white, and one, well, I'm not sure the smoker will fix him. But I'm not going to complain about an 82# 5 fish cooler.

I hear that. We were just south and inside of you and ended up 3/7. At least we landed the ones that were on for more than 5 seconds; not sure why the others were in hit and run mode.....

"I may pull lines and show him a 32 foot Sea Ray and a 6 foot wave as I circle him waiting for the waves to capsize him....." A couple years ago I was trolling in about 50' off Holland in 47 degree (lake had rolled) 3' waves. I was in my 215 Four Winns, which is a tank of a boat. Some jack-a$$ in a huge Tiara blew right past us on plane, stopped, ran over my stuff, and then did a hole shot 50' off my stern. All his buddies are laughing and pointing and thinking this is funny. A 215 Four Winns is a tank of a boat. I ended up over on my side and then took about 100 gallons over the stern. Gear every where, rods falling out of holders, my 3 year old daughter rolling around the cabin and my niece knocked over and hit the bow rail splits her forehead almost going out of the boat. Got TZ turned around and the pumps kicked in and cleared her out. I pulled lines as we were done, got the coasties involved and they wrote him 6 tickets. I got his name and a couple days later me and my 3 year old showed up at his house and had a talk. Actually it went like this "you know @#$@# well who I am so you're going to shut up and listen". So yeah, please swamp someone sometime. I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

Sweet. We could not get it dialed in in Holland last night. 2/4 but had a 17.4# hen that was only 33.5" long. Looked like a football with a huge girth, 25 minutes, just bull dogged. No big runs. Other king was 8#, both on meat rigs, 100-110' down over 120'.

You can get them trolling small spoons, spinners, or sticks from 15-25' down. Stinger Scorpions are really good. We've tried Half Moon and one just out of K-zoo but neither was planted this year. Only took first year fish out of Half Moon but on the one by K-zoo we've caught some very fine hold overs. And a 9" bluegill, on a downrigger, 30' down over 70' of water on a blueberry muffin small NK.

7 trips in the sandbars this spring and 2 browns to show for it - 4# and 14". 20 some browns in close last year and the biggest was 6#. My last two double digit browns have come on cores out in the middle of the lake. I may need to turn to turkey hunting in the spring..... Thanks.

We started in close and stayed there too long. Finally moved out to 60' and never touched the wheel until we were well north of Whitehall. All the spoons but DOC took a hit, and only one on the core. It was all riggers and divers in the bottom 10' of water. We didn't get bit until 6:05 and had 5 in the cooler at 6:30 with 6 and 7 headed in. Lost the blue fly soon thereafter which hurt a little. Only one bump after 9am. We had nice fish, but not really nice fish, so we weighed 59#. Ended up 9/13 with 7 kings from 8-13#, a 6# coho, and sweet almost 12# brown that hit the full core while I was reeling it in to move some lures around.

Worked the piers from 8-11. Saw one steelie hooked and broken off by two guys that were not paying attention and never knew it was there. Marked some perch in about 25' a little bit south. We ended up getting about a dozen sheepies. Biggest was 8# 15 ounces and took the American Tackle sheepie tournament. My daughter may have unrealistic expectations of her dad as she's fished three tournaments and won them all - I think I'm taking her to the B4K.