Twill23

Hehe Frank,

Sundays most people don't put down deposits seeing how banks aren't open, and those who have jobs aren't always free to do their browsing on weekdays

Also the boat had several issues prolly a better thing they didnt get it.

The motor would pop out of the water during turns?! The boat doesnt stand up on take off. Full throttle, the prop pops out of the water(yes with the trim ALL the way down) Back seats wont come out! Steering and throttle cables are super stiff. The boat was also a repo boat. But if Brandon did end up getting the boat, i hope it all works out for him!!!

I personally could care less if the person i knew got the boat or not! hehe

on the monarch? my understanding it was sold yesterday lol. infact one of my close buddies was supposed to be paying for it today. lol. ole well!

Which one is it? I know john personally, an he's a good guy. If it's the monarch he just sold it yesterday

Nice job jim, keep whackin em. Can't believe how warm the water is! TONS of fishing time left!

Nice fish TJ and nice to meet you im sure we will talk again. jimmy

Nice meeting you too Jim. Theres a slight chance i may try and make it down in october, if not ill for sure make it down next year. I love the area. We'll have to hook up.

First off I'd like to start out by thanking Terry(Dirty Dog) and Don(Tangled Mess) for the help this week. Both were extremely helpful in putting us on fish.

Early early Thursday morning we left for Holland. We launched about 6am and set lines in the channel. Soon as we hit the pier heads we boated 2 kings. Both on riggers on moonshine plugs. After 3 more passes we decided to pull lines and run down to Saugatuck. Boy was that the right move. We proceded to have 18 bites between 8-930. Our landing percentage was TERRIBLE, with having 2 complete rookies manning the rods. They still had a blast and so did we. I believe we ended up with 7 or 8 that day. Most of our hits came on 50 coppers with chrome plugs, and 30 back on divers with a moutain dew spin dr.

The amount of alewives in the area was absolutely astounding! As we would pass through the dirty water 10-20 of them would be jumping in the prop wash!

Thursday evening was almost the SAME story. TONS of bites, not many fish brought to the boat. Most of it being 3-5 fish at once making the whole rookie thing much more evident. Again 50 coppers and the wire set up was smokin hot.

Friday stuff changed all around for us. Our bites decreased to about 10 a trip infront of saugatuck and they stopped hitting the copper and switched over to 2 and 3 color cores and flat lines. The flat lines were best, pulling much bigger fish than other set ups.

By Sunday the pier bite was just about done. We moved out to deeper water where we marked tons of bait and tons of fish on the bottom. These fish just didnt wanna go. There was a STIFF current, that made finding fish pretty tough.

The pier bite sure produced some large fish over the week, including a 27lb 25, and 3 20-23.

(This, our biggest fish weighing in at 27lbs, came over a half mile north of the Saugatuck pier heads on our death troll pulling lines at 1030 am)

I spent a couple of days last week in Frankfort before running to Holland. About 90% of the kings are in the river. Coho fishing was pretty good when you could find the warmer water, which was north past the point. This was right after the huge blow we had that cooled the water to 41 degrees

Hey Jimmy,

we had 59 degrees down 85 in 105 fow. Lastnight, tons of bait and tons of trout on the bottom, just no takers. Thought you'd like to know, there must be a helluva temp break between where u were and where we were.

Water temp has dropped to 40-43 degrees. What would your plan of attack be? River channel is only 50-55. What would some of you do?

we used 2 four oz snap weights recently while in frankfort. They took a ton of fish early, including one at 27#. 30ft snap weight, 30ft snap weight. then 30-40ft board. Worked awesome for us. Check out a trolling bible for depths at different speeds of differently weighted snap weights.

Frankfort was AWESOME last week. Check out my 2 reports from lastweek.

http://www.greatlakesfisherman.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23859

http://www.greatlakesfisherman.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23917

We were also told meat was taking a lot of fish, but we stuck with our game plan instead. when they turned on, they turned on and we never ran any, although it was in the cooler.

Big Weenie brand makes some extremely nice meat rigs that are run behind paddles.

Check em out.

We left one tuesday during that big blow, i havent heard what that did to the fish yet.

Goodluck!!!

Oops sorry dave, i just put everything i woulda put here, in your last post

But i will add, dont shorten your leaders. Yes landing fish with a long leader behind a dipsey is very tough. We have issues even with our boat, the rocket launcher always gets in the way

But try this, as the fish is on, and your a couple of feet from the dipsey, get the fish's head up. That is by far the most important part, regardless if the fish is 5lbs or 25lbs. Once that fish's head is up, dont stop. Rip that thing right into the net. The hooks arent going to pull out. If you do it just right the fish becomes slightly stunned and ski's right into the net. We do this with EVERY fish possible, including those dandy's we posted out of frankfort, although we do believe throttle control when fighting a large fish is pretty important also, but thats a totally different topic! Hope this helps!

http://www.greatlakesfisherman.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23938

In this post Justin seems to be having the same problem.

Like i said in that post i blame most of my dipsey lost fish on user error or snubbers. Especially with wire. We all know how LITTLE stretch there is in wire and braid. This is what we do,.... DONT get too excited when that fish absolutely throttles that rod. Take your time, loosen up that drag and let him run. Don't change the angle of the hook, or put much pressure on the fish until he turns or provides a chance to gain line. It's SOOO easy for hooks tip rip out when using wire or braid. Also lengthening your leader behind your dipsey will give you more stretch. Of course these methods are only used on fish who absolutely throttle the rod. We dont do much for the obvious smaller fish. Those are much easier to land without the hooks ripping out. Most of the time once they turn, u can tighten the drag down and crank it in without letting the fish turn, he'll just swim right in

All of this may not be as fun, but it will put more fish in your boat, and cause less crappy feelings when you or your son loses a decent fish. Hope this helps, we learned it from a pretty decorated charter captain and it definitely works for us!

How loose are you normally loosening them when a fish hits?

Don't loosen them so much that you're giving the fish slack, but enough that the fish isn't going to rip the hook out. We all know wire has absolutely 0 stretch, and a snubber and the rod sometimes just isnt enough for the super powerful first run. I mean this isnt normally something we do with an obvious 5lb fish, but those fish that absolutely slam it, and you go "wowwwwww!" need a little bit of love before ya get em to the boat!

I blame my dipsey losses on crabby snubbers, and getting to the rod too fast. When that fish hits, loosen the drag WAY up and just leave it in the rod holder till the fish turns.

That is a crazy deal if the boat surveys out!

I love mullet lake, we have always pike fished it and steelheaded it. Theres a great steelhead fishery in the deep holes!

Added this year:

3place Bert's vertical rod trees mounted on 6in tracks for easy removal, As well as a custom built 5place rocket launcher made with Fishing Greats rod holders

Fish Hawk x4 down temp and speed system.

Look at mine listed on this site. Proven fish catching machine. ;P

I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but personally I absolutely despise the two cieras I've been on. You would have had much more fishing room in your lund than you do in the ciera. Also the boat fishes like a cork, the high center of gravity reallllllly makes fishing in any type of waves uncomfortable. Because the boat sits soooooo high and is so light, it is a monster around the dock in any type of breeze. There are a few positives, if you want to get a young one or a wife/gf involved the cabin provides many features most fishing boats of that size don't. If its going to be a straight fishing boat my advice would be to look for something else. Mid winter is the best time to shop!

low divers.. for us run on 1.5 they're level with the water and are "normally" deeper. Another diver rod(for us we run another wire) is set on 2.5 or 3. Normally people set this diver higher in the water column than the diver set at 1.5. A wire diver set on 1.5 dives roughly 1 for for every 2 feet let out, while on 3 it dives 1 foot for every 3 feet let out.. Recently we were running a lot of low divers at 120 and high divers at 175-190

Well monday 8/22 wrapped up our last day in Frankfort. We were extremely pleased with yesterday's cooler weighing in a beautiful 27lb king and 4 19's. We really didnt expect to be able to top that.. but top that is just what we did.

Monday morning we set in the same spot we had fished all weekend. 80fow between the herring hole and the pier heads. It was great because there were 300+ boats north near the saddle and no more than 10 even close to us. The before light bite was non existant for us. We were beginning to get a little nervous when old faithful went off. 100back on 1.5 with a green coyote and a green fly. This was just the beginning... We boated 6 fish in the next hour, including several cohos. As it got a little later we headed away from our 80ft and went out to 120-130. Rigger set at 63 with a ratchet jaw moonshine plug pops, after a very fun 25 minute fight we put the biggest king of the trip in the box.. 28lbs.

We ended the morning fishing the scum line for coho. We finished around 10 with 6 coho 3 kings and a steelie. Our smallest coho was 9lbs!

We ended our trip with 54 fish in 3 days.

(evening spread)

I think diver colors make a huge difference!!!.....for making sure you put them on the right side...Personally we have 4 wire divers(right sides are green and left sides are orange) and 4 braid divers(same setup)This is a life saver in the early morning when setting.. we all know how tough it is to think in the morning.

Finally got some time off and headed over to Frankfort kind of late Friday night, set up camp and hit the water just as the sun was disappearing. We ended the evening with 4 very nice kings one being 23lbs. Fished in 70-80fow on a north troll

200copper-Green splatter plug

6oz snap 100back-white plug

Low wire diver 80back-Green coyote green fly(2)

Saturday morning we started setting lines at 6am, apparently a little too late because we ended up not getting the full spread into the water until 7:30 because we were too busy fighting fish! 9 fish by 8 and we called it a good morning. 115-130 fow

200copper-green splatter plug

Low wire diver 80 back(4) green coyote green fly

Riggers down 63 green coyote green fly

6oz snap 100back-white plug

(took all of our fish)

Saturday evening we launched at about 5pm. Headed out to 250fow and set. Took 2 coho right away and then 2 small kings. Then it slowed right down. We headed toward shallower water but just couldn't get it going taking only 1 fish on a rigger 63 down on a michael jackson spin dr and green mag squid.. It was almost pitch black, and we were about to start pulling lines when all hell broke loose. 5 fishing coming all at one time. Almost instantly the 6oz snap goes, 100 copper, 200 copper, rigger at 63 and rigger at 58.

We ended up landing all 5 in complete darkness. Talk about being exhausted afterwards. We ended with 10 fish.

86fow

100copper-blue splatter

200copper-chrome spin dr green fly

6oz snap-white plug

rigger 63- green coyote green fly

Rigger 53- Green coyote green fly

Low divers at 120- green coyote green fly

Sunday morning we launched a little earlier and got our entire spread in the water! Again we were slightly worried as it got light out, and fish just werent going. We FINALLY took a king on a low diver and it all started going again. Divers were the ticket. Taking the first 3 fish. Soon as we caught the first 3 kings back to back to back, we tripled up, with the 6oz snap going first.. SCREAMING. The board went down like a bobber. Then the diver and a 200 copper. We decided to land the copper and diver first, leaving the 6oz snap in a rod holder with relatively heavy drag. First one hit the deck, 19lbs. Second one hit the deck, 19.5lbs, and after 45 minutes the 3rd hit the deck at 27lbs. We had cleared most of the gear and again had made a mess. It was getting rough so we decided to run out and just make an easy troll back through the same area. We ended up taking two more fish, 200 copper and a low diver. As it was getting rough we decided to call it an awesome morning with 8 fish(having farmed one right behind the boat).

Low divers-green coyote green fly

200copper-chrome spin dr green fly

rigger 63- Green spin dr green mag squid

100 copper-Blue splatter

6oz snap-white plug

With the HUGE increase in smelt numbers in the past several years, and the decrease of salmon fisherman targeting the species, this could be one the BEST decisions the MDRN could possibly make. This is finally giving the fishery a chance to rebound(which i firmly believe is already in it's first steps, dont believe me check out some of my brown trout reports from this yea). A combination of things killed the fishery, quagga mussels, and overstocking being one of them. Biologists were greatly mistaken when they believed that farm raised salmon would not reproduce naturally. I firmly believe it's going to be fixed and we're just looking at a normal cycle(we're lake michigan in the 1980's )