EdB

18 to 22 inches-chunky, they look good.

Hit the river this morning, I got 2 steelies, my buddy lost 3. All drifting spawn bags. Moved to the pier for the afternoon and we got 1 brown, 5 coho and 4whitefish between both of us. Had a great day, I caught 3 coho's to round out a limit for the day and one whitefish. My buddy had the hot hand on the pier to make up for his poor showing at the river. The coho's liked nightcrawlers 5-7ft under floats. The whitefish liked skein and single eggs. We also got some fish on spawn bags. Nice to use 3 rods. The boats were hitting a few fish too. Good luck!

first of May Lake trout open

Lake trout opens April 1 off St Joe this year when the new Lk Trout regs going into effect April 1. It will run to Oct 31st. That will be a nice bonus for the box.

Next year, it is Jan 1 to Oct 31.

That's a good one!

Shawn, My first forschner was a 12 incher, that was back in to the 20 pounder days. It's great for big fish. I like my 10 incher best for the size of fish we have been catching in recent year.

Yeah Charter Sucks !!!!!

Frank, Doesn't that computer customer service rep voice with 20 questions drive you nuts when you try to call them.

If you have run into that, here's a tip. Just start shouting "you mother f'rs and a bunch of other swear words and I'm going to cancel my service and it will connect you to a live person. Learned that trick last year.

Congratulations!

Name:Ed

Age:50

Residence Location:Waterloo,MI

Area(s) Most Often Fished:Ludington, St Joe, Erie

Years of Experience:30+ got "hooked" on salmon in 1975

Boat Size and Info: 21 ft Admiral, got her new in 1990 and she has been very good to me.

My dad took us to Manistee in 75 and we all got hooked on salmon then. We fished the piers and harbors for the first few years. The number of salmon stacked up in Manistee harbor if you hit it right back then was awesome. I'll never forget those days with my dad.

First started trolling in 1979 and I knew then I had to have a great lakes boat. Went through my greenhorn days in the early 80's in small boats. Had some awesome catches in my 14 ft'r when I started to get a clue. 2 homemade downriggers, a depth finder and two rods and me. Got skunked and paid my dues a bunch too. My buddy Jimmmy Jack in Ludington in the mid 80's to early 90's really taught a lot about trolling. We really got into offshore steelies after the salmon crashed due to BKD in 86. Milt Bennet on Highliner was also a mentor back in my early days. He was an offshore angler too. I remember he gave me some coordinates at St Joe in May and when we cleared piers, I realized it was 12 miles out. Made the run, saw a speck on the horizon and it was him. We were the only boats out there and just smoked em. I burn a lot of truck gas where I live and I don't mind burning boat gas either.

I've been on the water almost every weekend in summer ever since. I'm married to the coolest wife in the world, she let's me run but we like to have fun. I have two beautiful daughters who like to fish. Thank god the family loves Ludington and we have a place there for the season. Hope to see more of you guys around the docks this summer.

What I meant was to launch at Bolles Harbor to fish the dumping grounds, Toledo Light or off of Luna Pier (green onion). It's a shorter run to those areas. You can launch at the marina's in Luna Pier for a fee but if you get a license with the new state parks passport, you can launch at Sterling or Bolles for free. The best ramps/docks,harbor area and short channel to the lake is at Bolles. If you need a cleaning station, go to Sterling.

If your fishing the south shore, dumping grounds, luna pier, toledo light, go a few miles farther south to Bolles Harbor. The new license plates with a state park passport gets you in there this year. It is the best best launch facility of all in terms of docks and no lines or waiting. Only drawback is no cleaning station.

I almost spilled coffee on my computer so hard.

There are none that I know of. Plenty of dockage but no campgrounds attached.

Yeah, a bit of fat fingers on the typing and I think I might need some glasses for reading. Thanks Tim.

Come on over Kevin, I know I'm cooking something good outside on the smoker or grill for the superbowl, maybe I'll fire up both of them.

Here is a better pictorial on how to make them. You can play around with the internal ingrediants.

http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6253

Wish I lived closer to the bay, those are some nice looking eyes Adam!

Made up a batch of ATB's this past weekend for the football games. Everybody I know loves them except my kids. Thought I'd make a change to see if they'd eat them. Notice the middle plate.

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This isn't the best pic but notice the inside, Apple Buffalo Turds.

Just did these on the grill with some weber char baskets. The best accessory ever for a charcoal grill. Set it and forget it! Keeps your meat off the coals and elimates flare ups. I throw some soaked hickory sticks on the coals too. Great for ATB's and chicken and pork. They also produce a nice even heat that browns your food nicely. Notice the cheese starting to ooze as they are almost done.

They turned out great. I still liked the regular ATB's the best but I wish I would have rolled up a bunch more apple ones. The wife and kids loved them, I thought they were good too. I just used apple slices instead of jalapenos. I cut apples in thirds and hollowed out the inside a bit. No other changes, I used a cream cheese, parmesan, mozzarella and a 1/2 smokey link inside. They didn't roll up as neat and easy but they cooked up fine. Here's the finished batch. The apples left them very mild which the kids liked. The apple bt's are on the right side in this pic.

No cabin fever here, hunting season was great till the end of last year. Ice fishing is taking off now, got an 11 inch red ear last Sat to go with 18 others:D. Yum Yum! Going to do some coyote hunting and a pheasant tower shoot over the next few weeks along with more ice fishing. Hit one steelie in the river this month so far and that is going to heat up in February and than the pier fishing and rivers rock in March! NFL playoffs, Superbowl and Daytona Sundays are great too. I like winter!

I pondered this for a minute and it hit me. I just got up, pulled the list of chores for me the wife stuck on the fridge and crumpled it up and threw it in the trash, won't be no time for that unless we get a blizzard.

Hand held GPS units come in handy with these conditions.

Welcome Capt Ed, this site is a whole lot nicer than most others out there.

They are awesome spoons! Orange fireball is a steelie killer.

We'll sometimes run a single meat head and strip with no teasers behind 8in SD and paddles. Run a shorter lead to the meat head too than a 3 fly meat rig.

Hey Adam, did you ever know a duck hunter who wasn't enamored by bands:D!!!

Even though I didn't get to keep these, I took close up pics of the bands to get the numbers and reported them as soon as I got them off the camera. I e-mailed the pics and story to the USFW. Got this back:

Hi Ed,

Thank you so much for the story and the pictures!! It's nice to know that there are people out there that will help an animal/bird when it's needed.

This is a female Trumpeter Swan that was banded 06/26/2005 8 W of Free Soil, MI. She's been seen 3 times this year all near Ludington, MI.

Thanks again!

Rose DeComo

Bird Banding Laboratory

This happened this past summer. Our day began with plans to hike along the west side of Hamlin Lake. As we got near the Hamlin Lake dunes, we were excited to spot a trumpeter swan with a neck band swimming close to shore. We noticed a fishing bobber on his neck just above his orange collar.

The swan followed the shoreline until he encountered a man and his dog swimming by the dunes. The dog spooked the swan and he attempted to fly away. Just as he cleared the water and got into the air, he suddenly nose dived and crashed hard back into the water. He attempted to fly again and crashed again. It was clear that he was entangled in some line and it was preventing a smooth take off. By now he was a ways offshore and swam toward the cove where we first spotted him. Our hearts sank when we realized he couldn’t fly but had enough strength to keep anyone from approaching him to help.

We had to hike back by the cove to return and our friends led the way. As they came down the path, they spotted the swan ahead walking down the trail. Note the bobber on his neck.

Roy pulled out his camera and started snapping pictures as his wife Robin noticed a long fishing line trailing from the swan. She rushed ahead to grab it.

The swan headed into some wetlands near the trail and hunkered down when he realized he was caught.

I was farther back on the trail and thought one of the kids might be hurt when I heard all the screaming. I started running to catch up and saw Robin with the line and everyone shouting we’ve caught the swan. I couldn’t see him but I trailed the line into the cattails and found the swan doing his best to stay hidden. I grabbed his neck and leg expecting to get thrashed but the sawn remained fairly subdued.

I got my arm around his body to hold his wings and brought him up to dry ground.

We laid him down and my wife Dina wrapped some socks around his head and eyes to help settle him down as Robin and I worked to remove the line.

He had a single hook securely buried into his wing. The line went around and neck and tangled there with the bobber. This formed a loop around his neck and the knot at the bobber kept it from strangling him. The line trailed back around his wing and then tangled around one of his legs. There was about 40 feet of line trailing behind him from there. The line was spectra braid fire line and none of us had a knife or a lighter to cut it. I got the hook out but we were stuck for a moment trying to figure out how we could get the loop around his neck undone. I tried biting through it without luck and then attempted to saw it with some car keys. I asked my wife to get her fingers under the loop to protect the swans neck and as I worked on it with the keys. I still couldn’t cut it but we were able to stretch the loop open to about 4 inches in diameter. This was enough to get it over his head and we quickly got the rest untangled from him.

We all had huge smiles on our faces and the few scratches and wet shoes I ended up with were well worth it.

The swan headed for the lake and when he got to the waters edge, he spread his wings to stretch them out, tucked them back into place and then swam away.

I'll never know what caused the swan to get out of the lake and start walking down the trail, very odd behavior for a swan but he clearly needed some help. This was one of my strangest encounters with nature!

Congratulations on the win!

More info here:http://www.slammertipup.com/

Congrats Matt.