EdB

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.

I love my 1-1/2 lb weights(I think they run better than 1lbs) but I run mine off mono or braid and run them in the low diver spot most of time with a high diver outside it. If the low divers are smacking fish, I'll run one down the chute. You can move them to either side when down the chute if your landing a fish. I never have problems with tangles because they are behind the riggers and if I have low divers out, I have then set on 1 so if I move a 1-1/2lb that was down the chute off the side, they still stay out of the divers.

I like a homer rhodes knot for wire, great link, just click continue a couple times to see how to tie it: http://www.noreast.com/knots/knotspage3.cfm

http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/hunting/2010/11/steelhead-fisherman-snags-drowned-fighting-bucks-michigans-st-joseph-river There is a picture in the link, 2 nice bucks! Two Michigan men out for a day of steelheading instead reeled in this pair of massive bucks that drowned while fighting. Two Berrien County men ended up with more than fish during a trip earlier this week on the St. Joseph River. Royalton Township resident Bryan Ammeson and St. Joseph resident Scott Stoney were fishing for steelhead from a boat Wednesday when they spotted a pair of bucks fighting near shore. The bucks' antlers locked and they fell into the river and drowned. " I ended up hooking them up to the side of the boat and we took them back to shore, Ammeson said. "One ended up being a 17-point with two drop tines, and another one is a perfect 10-point rack that's just absolutely massive."Everybody that I've showed this to so far has said that's one of the biggest deer they've ever seen." Ammeson said he tried unsuccessfully to reach officials with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment. He contacted Benton Township police and obtained a pair of carcass permits so he could claim the animals legally. Ammeson has photos, and police back up his fish tale. "They were both two huge bucks," said Benton Township police Lt. Delmar Lange. Ammeson said the bucks were processed for meat, but the heads will be mounted with the antlers interlocked.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101104/ap_on_sp_ot/us_lead_fishing_tackle By FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press – Thu Nov 4, 6:12 pm ET WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency denied on Thursday a petition by several environmental groups to ban lead in fishing tackle, two months after rejecting the groups' attempt to ban it in hunting ammunition. The EPA said that the petition did not demonstrate that a ban on lead in fishing tackle was necessary to protect against unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, as required by the Toxic Substances Control Act. In a letter to the American Bird Conservancy, one of the groups that filed the petition, EPA Assistant Administrator Stephen A. Owens said that a number of steps are being taken to address the concerns of lead in fishing tackle. Among them: limitations of lead in fishing gear on some federal lands; bans or restrictions on the state level; and federal and state outreach and education efforts. "The emergence of these programs and activities over the past decade calls into question whether the broad rulemaking requested in your petition would be the least burdensome, adequately protective approach," Owens wrote to the conservancy's director of conservation advocacy, Michael Fry. In their petition, the groups had argued that lead from spent hunting ammunition and lost lead fishing gear causes the deaths of 10 million to 20 million birds and other animals a year by lead poisoning. Fry assailed the EPA's decision. "The EPA has apparently completely abdicated its responsibility for regulating toxic lead in circumstances where wildlife are being poisoned," he said. Fry suggested the reason for the decision was politics: "The political appointees have acted in this administration not like heads of agencies, but like they're running for office." In a statement, the EPA said: "This decision is based solely on an analysis of the facts and the law. EPA conducted a careful review of this petition and made a determination that the petitioners did not make the case that is required under (the law) to undertake a national ban on lead in fishing gear." The petition, filed three months ago, stoked alarm among outdoorsmen, and members of the House and Senate introduced legislation aimed at preventing the EPA from regulating ammunition or fishing tackle. The American Sportfishing Association praised the EPA announcement. "It represents a solid review of the biological facts, as well as the economic and social impacts that would have resulted from such a sweeping federal action," said group vice president Gordon Robertson. "It is a commonsense decision." He argued that a lead ban would increase costs and price out many anglers, which in turn would decrease tax and license revenue for fisheries conservation. In 1994, under President Bill Clinton and EPA administrator Carol Browner, now White House energy adviser, the EPA actually proposed banning lead and zinc in certain smaller-size fishing sinkers. The agency said in a statement at the time: "The ingestion of even one small fishing sinker containing lead or zinc can result in the death of a water bird." The proposal sparked a backlash in Congress. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, introduced the "Common Sense in Fishing Regulations Act" in 1995 that would have blocked the EPA from implementing it. The agency eventually abandoned the proposal. The American Bird Conservancy filed the petition in August along with the Center for Biological Diversity, the Association of Avian Veterinarians, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and a hunters group called Project Gutpile, seeking a ban on lead in both hunting ammunition and fishing tackle. The petition cited nearly 500 peer-reviewed scientific articles that the groups said document the toxic effects of lead on wildlife. These studies "conclude that the lead components of bullets, shotgun pellets, fishing weights and lures pose an unreasonable risk of injury to human and wildlife health and the environment," the Aug. 3 petition argued. The EPA earlier rejected the ammunition part of the petition, saying it didn't have authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act, but that it would make a decision on the part pertaining to fishing tackle. In September, 60 groups wrote to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson asking her to grant the petition for both ammunition and tackle.

That's a nice end to the season!

I'd rather use frozen steelie eggs than cured eggs any day. They will milk out and turn pale, I just change them up. Trust me, they work great;)

Great catch!

Skip the plugs and go with all spoons this time of year. Don't hesitate to throw out a high line, maybe a 1-4 oz weight and an orange spoon. 90-100 ft of water was good last weekend but shallower could be good the later it gets.

That is a nice coho, the biggest I've seen this year.

Jason, the pics weren't the best, lot's of glare and that one on the left sure looks coho like in that pic but it was a nice steelie. It had more girth than most steelies.

Here's a couple pics of some steelies we got. Best part of this trip was having my oldest daughter with me. She caught a lot of the fish and got her biggest steelhead. She caught both of these. Jim got this steelie:

Got out one last time on Saturday on my friends boat in Onekama. Fishing was great. We hit 16 fish and boat 12. We didn't fish long, left the dock at 7:00 and were back at 10:00. It was slow for the first hour and then it lit up with doubles and triples. Wind started blowing hard when we left. Got some nice steelies, one mature coho and some 2 and 3 yr old kings. We fished straight out in 90-100 ft of water. Riggers down 40 to 70 feet. low mag divers out 130, highs out 170. 1/2 core with a super slim fireball, 9 color with mag DW leapord frog and a 200 ft copper with a regular leopard frog. A stinger NBK was good on the 70 ft rigger. A DW double orange crush and a stinger steelie stomper were good as free sliders on the corner riggers down 60 and 70 ft. A dancing anchovy moonshine was good on a low diver and streak metalic yellow tail was good on a high diver. My Ludington neighbors really whacked them down there too. Once boat fished the bank in the same water depth and got 15 and another went south in the 38's and out and got 23. Fishing is red hot up there now, good luck!

Nice ride Mike!

Here's a link to state website. I don't see any chapters in the UP. If you've got some like minded buddies, you might be able to start a chapter. http://www.michigansteelheaders.org/ Edit, not sure what happened, thought I was replying to a question on a St Ignace Chapt and it's gone now.

I know hunting season will go by fast, hope winter goes by even faster till we get back on the water.

Nice job on the fish! Hope to get out one more time this weekend at Ludington and then I'm done. Hunting season is getting into full swing.