Twill23

Seams wild seeing Walleye and lakers in the same cooler.

LOL yea. it tends to happen a lot before lake trout season open. But this one was around the 10th of May. Actually a local charter captain I'm close to had mixed bunches of Lake trout, steelhead, and walleye in mid august fishing 120ft of water near the nordmeer wreck(12miles offshore). They were all jam packed full of smelt!

To be honest, deep fried in wet drakes. We put on a benefit fish fry for the local fire department every year. Usually we serve pike, walleye, and lake trout. Believe it or not (because we do not label what fish is what, but keep them all separate) Lake trout usually ends up getting the best review. Then pike then walleye. This is prolly because our walleye are averaging all about 20. But who knows. Haha. If they don't know what kind of fish they're eating they can't dislike it for its name

Thats how they check the sex. The weight was taken before the fish was cut open. The fish had 3 small smelt in it.

Well unfortunately this season is over for me. Work will keep me in Pennsylvania until prolly November. I didnt get a whole lot of time off this summer to fish. (as much as i normally would) But we made the most with what we had.

I'd like to send out a thanks to Priority 1(Frank) for the trip in Au gres. Had an absolute blast. It's was great fishin with you, and im happy we could get you up to Rockport for some early season lake trout.

I'd also like to send a thank you out to Ryan Sagady of Bay Sportfishing. I had to pleasure to hook up with him a couple of times and whack a few walleye around Alpena. Sure is a blast buddy and ill be seein ya around !

This years numbers turned out about average in the Lake trout area. We took 17 trips targeting lake trout this year and ended up going home with a total of 147. This does not count the days where we limited out early and kept fishin for fun.

Walleye numbers were above average. This season was absolutely amazing. I didn't get out as many times as i would of liked but we did keep 86 in 6 trips(not including the trip with Frank or any with Ryan).

This year while i got some vacation time we spent a week over in Manistee. We kept 45 kings, and 4 coho in the 7 trips.

All in all it was a great year of fishing. I hope next year will continue where this year has left off. Thank you to everyone here for the great tips and stories.

The walleye's stomach is cut open because it was weighed and checked by a DNR biologist( weight:8.3lbs Length: 30 1/8in Sex: Male)

OMG those two dudes are by far the coolest people i have ever seen. I wish i could give them a high five!

Where we are our dipsies don't normally take a huge pounding from all the lake trout But in our past trip to Manistee our wire diver back 200 was absolutely pounding hot. Hit after hit after hit, but our hookup percentage was around 50%! I had a 12in ripcord on it and switch back to the old school LJ snubber. Our hookups drastically increased in the same day. The same rig was used(fly and coyote). I always use a snubber that color cordinates with my entire rig(dipsey, fly, attractor). Thats just me though.

Hello Dan, Firstly i'd like to welcome you to the site. There is a great wealth of fishing knowledge here from some great people. My reply is to solely express my opinion and to produce what i believe are hard facts to support this subject. In no way am i trying to "attack" you or anything of that matter. With that being said and knowing that this is my field of work i am VERY opinionated on this subject and will apologize now if i do end up getting too fired up and say something i shouldn't. I believe this will prolly be my last post on this subject for fear of causing too much trouble.(Brought on by myself)

i have seen the movie. I did not say anything that could possibly be refuted as false. The gas drilling is done ABOUT a mile under the surface. How deep is your water well? I will challenge your word of "Nice" for the video interviews. Much of this "movie" is of the narrator making idiotic faces towards the camera as he lights water on fire. These movies are in the same weight class as my childhood movies where my mothers hands shake from side to side as my first few steps are taken across the living room.

But lets move past the total neglect for any actual fact put into the movie and look at some real facts. I PERSONALLY worked in Dimock, PA. If you have seen the movie you will recognize the name and associate it with one of the "nice video interviews" that were done. I have PERSONALLY spoken with SOME of the 15 families who were filing the suit against Cabot Gas and Oil. The water was never tested before their sudden claims of "bad water." Cabot is reportedly to have drilled over 100 gas wells drilled by the end of this year. I will be the first to admit that the water issues are not because of the method of drilling, rather that of the drillers themselves. Most of these so called water issues people have are from spills. Weather it be sludge spills, diesel spills, or any of the many hazardous materials that could be mishandled.

With that being said the DEP(Department of Enviromental Protection) did fine Cabot some 120,000 dollars for spills.

These people were more angry about their agreed permit leases than they were about the water. These were the same people who agreed to lease their land for X amount of dollars, realized their neighbors got more and tried to grab some more out of the huge gas money pot. Sir i do not think you realize how much money is envolved with this entire gas search program. Cabot settled for a sum of 250,000 dollars.

You see there is so much money to be had in this all its getting to be overwhelming. Many of the issues you will see are with non land owners. Those who do not own mineral rights to their property or those who do not own a large amount of land. Farmers in and around the area stated above are receiving anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 dollars PER ACRE just to have seismic data collected.(The process of finding out whats down there) But for those who don't have a legitimate stake of land they are receiving as little as 1,000 per acre(some areas even less).

I spent 8 months working around Dimock, and I will support gas search in anyways possible. I saw it turn around a dieing area. I saw it put HUNDREDS of unemployed people into work. Not just people working on the rigs, but people doing road construction(a large amount of semis drive up and down the roads and gas companies are paying to have roads re-done), people who do logging business(some areas trees do have to be removed to put in test wells or big rigs), people who do landscaping(all the big rigs hire landscapers to come smooth out the ground, AS WELL AS replanting of seeds and trees when the area is vacated), people who are in the trucking business(there is SOOOO much equipment that has to be moved daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Many of the companies will hire people to move their equipment for them), hotels and motels(hundreds of people need to stay somewhere. This is a nomad type of job.) gas station owners as well as any little country store that has food or snacks(there is an overwhelming amount of hard working people who will stop in every single day and spend anywhere from 10-25 bucks a day in a gas station buying food and snacks for the days work)local car dealerships (Cabot gas and oil, the first day i was there, went down to a local Ford dealer and bought 3 brand new Ford F-150's for use in the field. A company like this has several hundred trucks that are used everyday and they get replaced pretty often.).

I will agree with you that all drilling does need to be regulated. The DEP needs to be involved. Laws need to be put into place. But it has to be taken into consideration that gas search is an economy changing type of even. Pennsylvania was getting to be just as bad as Michigan currently is, until gas exploration took off in the Marcellus Shale. In my educated opinion i will say its really turning the economy around in the state.

With that being said, we are currently working on SEVERAL projects in northern michigan. We have recently just finished a job in and around Hawks. Which happens to be only 30minutes from my home. I am not sure how data came out, nor am i sure how many test wells are going to be put in this area. Personally i hope and pray that there are a decent amount. I live near Alpena and had around 10 of my personal friends get hired into a seismic crew to help with the job in Hawks. Some of these friends have since quit and decided this work is not for them, although others have decided to stick with it and are in several other places like Texas, West Virginia, and Montana. All of these people were unemployed before this job was started.

This site is about fishing so lets bring that into play also. Salmon fishing on the great lakes, as we all know, is not a cheap hobby to participate in. I grew up fishing with my father in a small 17ft sport boat. 2 downriggers and and couple of dipsies caught us a few fish. Now i run 3 boats my self that i have bought and paid for with my own money. Over a hundred rods and more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at. I am 21 years old and will be the first to say i am thankful for everything i have and i owe that to the field i work in.

I think a man said it best who owned a small gas station in South Montrose,PA "I was about to lose this store before you guys got here, now once you leave ill be able to take a 3 month vacation!"

Stories like this anger me more and more. I personally work in the gas exploration field. Things like this are written by people who are extremely unknowledgeable of the process. Gas is extracted a mile(5280 ft) below the surface, while average well water is drilled no deeper than 300 feet. Gas drilling has been going on for some 50 years in the states. Infact Michigan is starting to become a popular place, especially northern Michigan.

Sure seemed like a grown adult "voicing his opinion" much like a young child would tell their mother they were hungry.

i totally forgot to mention that this fish was a male, also the adipose fin was clipped. The head has been sent in to the fisheries

He blew up and left GLF

Between them and the overabundance of lakers, the bait pods take quite the hit.

The only good thing that i can possibly see is the huge rise in the number of smelt we are seeing in our area. Both fish feed on the same bait, gobies and smelt(as well as blues and greys). All of which are thriving at this time. You cant argue with the survey nets, all you can do is smile!

Yea its hit an miss. We never caught more than 3 fish at any one spot.

Yessir, actual went out last three days. Ryan Sagady of Bay Sportfishing was in the area and we hooked up and got into some real nice fish. One at 8lbs. I think 10 Friday 8 Saturday and 6 today. But wind played a huge factor.

The actual reef is apart of the lake trout refuge. But there's good structure on the edge of it, 39 miles out.

Hmmm Idk about that. There's a pretty small group of us that consistently fish out there. It would most likely be an out-of-towner. I'd say there is prolly 6 of us that fish there outside of tournament time.

O yea? Where at?

Trolling. There is really no jigging done in our area. It came on a tin can and a green fly with a spinner in front of it.

I have no idea stomach was checked after we cleaned it

Yea lol. I still don't believe it everytime I think about it

Now if i would of been standing around the dock today and someone would of told me a big story about a 17lb lake trout that had 68 single smelt in its stomach i would of laughed at him and not believed a word the man was saying. Well now im the guy telling the story. Yesterday we ran out of Rockport(Lake Huron north of Alpena) out to the wreck. We ended the short evening trip with our limit of lake trout(4 of us) including a dandy. Measured right at 34inches and weighed in at 16.8 lbs. Now i normally don't stick around to help clean fish cause, well truthfully, im lazy. But today i did. We saved the largest to clean last and opened it up. I could not believe me eyes. It's stomach was HUGE. Softball girth and near football length. We opened up the stomach to find it totally jam packed full of fresh smelt. 68 to be exact. Talk about some serious bait fish.

Stayed a week in Manistee and had a "decent" week. Had a couple of blow days mixed in but thats fishing. We took 44 kings, one lake trout, and 4 coho. We had planned on fishing the Monster Mania, and were REALLY onto the fish up until Friday. The wind blew the wrong way and they moved. Saturday a bunch of smaller fish were there and we didn't do nearly as well. Our biggest fish weighed in at 21.3 lbs(scale), as well as several in the 18lb rang. (scaled at campground) We stayed at the Matson Campground off of M-55. We had a VERY enjoyable time!

-What worked best for us-

Wire dipsey- mag ring mag dipsey- 200 Back on Chrome spin dr green fly.

Wire Dipsey- Reg, Reg ring- 180 back Green prism coyote green glow fly.

Downrigger- Black 11in Paddle green fly-110 down

Downrigger- Straight Glow 11in paddle green fly- 108 down

Downrigger-Moonshine down 82

I was in manistee when this happened. I watched the second boat hit the wall. Unfortunately i think its a case of incompetency. For some reason people are sooooo geared up for spending several hundred dollars on downriggers, spoons, attractors, flies, etc, when really their first major purchase should be a decent chart plotter. In my opinion in this day and age with the mapping software and gps capabilities that are available there should never be a boat that hits a break wall. That is assuming there are no tests being dont on satellites when your coming in. If there are then slow down. This is coming from someone who was ON a boat that run aground. Rather than spend that 450 bucks on those lures and new rods a reels, pick up a chartplotter and learn how to use it. Just my 2 cents.

110 down over the deep water on big paddles.

I'm in manistee right now. We're catching fish straight out and south in 100-200 fow early and 250-400 during the day. Riggers down 80 are hot. Moonshines and glow plugs. Wire divers back 200+ with a chrome paddle and green fly are also producing fish. We'll be here till Sunday. Goodluck!!