Sea Eagle

Hit St. Joe on Friday for the first trip of the season. 7-8 all coho. Lost fish was more than likely big king. Got lines in around 8:30 and trolled south down about 3-4 miles working 20’ +/- 5’ but only had two fish to show for 4+ hrs of fishing. One we caught and one we pulled in after snagging someone’s broke off line with a fish still on it. We turned around and trolled all the way back to try the mud line, but all we caught up there was a planer board with a deep diving Rapala still attached. Owners name and phone number was on his planer board, so we called him and will try to get his stuff back to him sometime next week. Pulled lines around 1:00 and ran back down south to where we stopped and continued south and caught 5 fish and lost that nice king in the next 1 1/2 hrs. Thin fins, small spoons and 3.5 Mag Lips all caught fish. Nothing on coho dodger and spin n glow combo. The fish are definitely still south of St. Joe, or at least they were for us on Friday.

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Good job. Boats in the shop for overheat issue. Hope to have it back this week then hit St. Joe.


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Nice. Thanks for the report. Got back from down south and started getting the boat ready. Hopefully get out there first nice day sometime next week. 

I had a trophy 1802 and only ran manual downriggers with light balls, so I mounted them in tracks  I decided to forgo tracks when I rigged my 2102 since I got new Big Jon Tournament electrics. I ran 12 lb balls on longer poles, so I through bolted the down riggers on Big Jon swivel plates with 1/4” aluminum backer plate. I still used tracks to mount my rod holders and trees. 

Went 6-9 with possibly a couple missed fish. 130’-150’ on a NW troll slightly north of pier was best. Three kings, coho, steelhead and lake trout. Big king was 24 lbs. Blue dolphin paddle with green fly meat rig on a SWR DR down 85’ and another one on 300 Cu was hottest, homemade pink/blue UV spoon on 200 and 300 Cu was next and blue dolphin spoon on SWR DR down 75’ took a couple. 200 Cu only fired once. Had a heart breaker on a big mature king (already turned) on the 300 Cu. Got into the 200 Cu, pulled that board under and after 25 mins fighting both board and fish he  came unbuttoned at the back of the boat as we tried to get the tangled planner board off. Exciting day with a double and triple on with just two guys in the boat. 

1 hour ago, Tyeeplease said:

Good job , great report, also very nice boat , trailerable to stay on the fish port to port, what model, size is it, love it!


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2050 Crestliner Commander. That’s exactly why I got the boat. It’s a great multi species boat and very trailerable. Works good on inland lakes and the Great Lakes. Besides our usual Lake Michigan salmon adventures, I usually (in normal times) Make several trips over to Lake Erie to chase walleye. We even took it up to Mullett Lake for a week last year and included one day where we trolled from Cheboygan to Mackinaw Island for kings. Here are a couple more photos if you are interested or thinking about one. It actually has more room for fishing than my old boat (shown) that I also loved, but was a one trick pony for the big lake.  

Went 7-8 including a 10# and 17# king. The balance were lake trout. Turned one undersized laker back.  Fished straight out to south towards the power plant in 90’-120’. Both kings and a nice laker came in 95’. Did pick up a couple Lakers trolling on the way in between 85’-65’.   Down riggers, 5 color, 10 color and 300 Cu all took fish. 200 Cu never fired. 10 color and 300 Cu were best. All spoons. Started with the usual suspects and a mix of colors, but quickly switched over to a few more of my doctored up spoons after they kept firing. I can’t tell you the spoon names because they are custom. I just look for spoons that have some of that blue/purple UV tape on them and mark them up with my pink paint pen.  I started my new love affair with pink and purple spoons for salmon after having great luck with pink and purple small size spoons for Walleye. The spoons shown took all the fish except the bloody nose on the right that took a laker on 1/2 core on the way in. 

Good job. Thanks for the report 

Good job. 

31 minutes ago, HarrisJrld said:

Looking to get one for myself, got any advice what to look out for? Did some research but want to know firsthand info, thanks!

Not much else to add to the topic other than getting recommendations from folks who have used the shop in you area other than that I’d make sure to use the sunbrella material. Really good stuff. 

I purchased my Big Jon Tournaments along with my tracks and Berts ratcheting rod holders at the GR sports show many years ago now. I've moved them between my boats by just adding new tracks. I've used both Berts and Traxstech tracks. My downriggers are mounted on Big Jon swivel bases. Here is a photo of my set up on my latest boat. You can definitely save a bunch of money by buying at the spring shows. I picked up my trees at a swap meet for $75 for the pair. I might also be the guy Dan was talking about who runs 300 Cu and 10 colors of leadcore on church Walleye boards.  If you have one, I did need to fabricate a new pick up for my Depth Raider speed/temp probe so the bead for the auto stops on the down riggers would pass through. I made it out of some flared copper tubing, a couple of tubing clamps and some zip ties. Here is a close up of that. 

Fished Port Clinton 4 days 6/21 - 6/24. Got a late start on Friday looking for a launch not flooded out and ended up launching out of Mazurik. Trolled to the southeast from northwest of Kelly's island down towards Cedar Point. Picked up a few early then again well east of Kelly's island. Pulled lines at 2:00 one fish shy of a two man limit.  Now knowing were the clearer water and larger fish were we hit the same area the next three days punching our two man ticket each day before lunch and in just 1 1/2 hrs on Monday. Best in 45' of water in area shown on attached screen shot. Stinger sized spoon bite. Hot colors as shown in photo. The two spoons shown on the left of the photo took 80% of our fish. Some copies of the same spoons had been modified with pink paint on the backside.  The most productive presentations were 150' of 20 lb walleye copper and 3 color of 27 lb Salmon leadcore.  200' of copper and 2 colors of leadcore also took a few fish.

Good job. I bet the boys had a blast. 

2 hours ago, Mega Byte said:

When we fished Pentwater on Thursday, we were 8 for 9 by 7 am. It slowed down after that. You might be right...with all the bait around it is a feeding frenzy as soon as they can see well enough to hunt. If you get out there after they have feasted and stuffed themselves for two or three hours, it makes sense they might not hit as aggressively. Back when there was less bait (think 2015), I think they were constantly hunting. That might not be the case anymore. I wonder what a biologist would say.

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I'm going to give it another try and get out early the next chance when we can go and see what happens. Like Dan, then it's on to Erie for walleye. 

5 hours ago, Dalevan said:

We fished Holland hard yesterday morning and came up empty. 1 hit at 6:45 and after that nothing. I am wondering if the Kings have moved farther north.

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See Salmon Snipers post from today. He fished the same area, same depth as we did yesterday and went 7-8 with some of the same presentations we had including the same moonshine spoon on a 300 Cu that took 3 fish for them and nothing for us.  

So what's different?  We got our lines in between 7:30 - 8:00 and lost a nice fish almost immediately. He set lines just before 6:00 and had slow but steady fishing until 8:30 and never had a hit after that. With all baitfish out there the salmon could just full and the key is just getting out early.

Great job. Thanks for the report. Thought the fish might have moved on, but thanks to your success I'm going to going to give it a try again asap, but you can bet I'm going to have our lines in the water earlier than last trip. 

18 minutes ago, Hockey390 said:

There was another boat fishing similar depth and catching fish when I wasn't. I was pounding the area and depth of the bait/bugs. He might have been outside of it. I can think of at least a half dozen trips where I've marked these and consistantly have not much when fishing in or around it. Most of the time I catch fish that aren't even on the graph.
I did catch a suspended lake trout around those clouds. Go figure.

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Well it turns out those balls might actually be bait fish after all. My neighbor went out this morning and fished the same area, same depth as we did yesterday and went 7-8. One of his comments was "Lots of bait, all of the fish were full of alewives. On the way out there were alewives all over in the river. Saw 2 people catch steelhead off the piers."  To make it even more interesting we had the same moonshine spoon on a 300 Cu that took 3 fish for them and several other same or similar presentations. 

So what's different?  We got our lines in between 7:30 - 8:00 and lost a nice fish almost immediately. He set lines just before 6:00 and had slow but steady fishing until 8:30 and never had a hit after that. To be fair they had to pull lines at 9:15 due to other commitments, so who know how well they could have done if they could have stayed out longer. 

I guess my point is that if those marks are all baitfish, then the salmon could just be full early and the old adage of the early bird gets the worm might be appropriate. Years ago we always had our lines in at least 30 mins before sun rise. My old fishing partner always wanted to make sure we were off the water and getting a burger and beer someplace around lunchtime. I think I just got lazy when the fishing was easy but, getting out early always put another 3-4 fish in our box. Might be the difference.

22 minutes ago, Hockey390 said:

So I guess the million dollar question would be... Do you fish those spots or avoid them? I always try setting up on these types of marks and get frustrated when I can't get a darn thing to work in/around it. 

PS, sorry if I'm hijacking the post.

Nothing to be sorry about. This is exactly why I'm asking the question. Just like you we assumed that those were baitfish and stayed in the areas where we marked the "baitfish" to no avail. Now I'm wondering if that was the wrong move. I'm not sure what the salmon think of it if there are heavy concentrations of bugs in the water. Does it irritate their gills and they move out of the area like when a big blow puts a bunch of stirred up sand in the water? Logic tells me that even if those were bugs, would something small be eating them at some level in the food chain that ultimately leads to something salmon like to eat?  Good discussion. 

23 minutes ago, TyeeII said:

You can definitely see bug hatches on your locator. We were once fishing what we thought were bait schools when the water behind us turned dark brown and started to look like smoke. Then we trolled right through one of the pods of insects and you almost couldn't breathe. It was a midge fly hatch we experienced that was so thick it was almost biblical.

If you were surrounded by flies on deck, I would say those definitely could be insect hatches you marked.

98% of our bugs on Friday were the same midges you experienced and sounds like they may be the same thing Darrin had up in Grand Haven. 

2 minutes ago, Hockey390 said:

I had the same experiance in Grand Haven on Thursday. Lots of bait. 1 for 3 but with all the bait felt there should have been more fish.

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I have not seen balls of bait like that in years. Kind of why I was wondering if you could see swarms of bugs hatching up off the bottom on the sonar. There were a lot of bugs in the boat and dead on the surface of the water. 

We hit SoHa today. Disappointing to say the least. Lost nice fish first thing then dragged around a very small king for a while. Trolled in and out of 90' to 120' all morning  southwest of the pier head.  Riggers with sliders, 1/2 core, fully core, 200 and 300 Cu.  Marked a bunch of? On the sonar. What do you all think, baitfish or bugs?

We hit SoHa today. Disappointing for us as well. Lost nice fish first thing then dragged around a very small king for a while. Trolled in and out of 90' to 120' all morning  southwest of the pier head.

Thanks for the report. Nice to see some big kings finally make their way up to South Haven. 

Good job Dan. We had an off day. Only went 1-3. Tried to go back to the areas NW of the pier where I found fish on Monday and Saturday going 23 - 27 between the two days. Set lines in 95' and went out to 130' and back in as shallow as 60'. Took our lone fish in around 92' of water on the way back in. Considered trolling over to where you were, but decided to just head in due to the bumpy ride and I had grass to cut at home. Talked to a couple of boats at the boat launch who did well in as shallow 60'. Seems like the fish are scattered and yesterday, at least for us, up to the NW was not the place to be. If you find them and stay on them you will do well. Just like in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. 

Good job. We had a very similar experience to yours in St Joe on Saturday. Fished in 90-115 early with only 3 fish to show for our efforts, then slid out to 120-160 around lunch for our next nine fish. We pulled lines at 2:30, but could have kept catching fish as we were taking fish even as we were pulling lines. Like you everything was getting hit from 14' down to 75'. Green was definitely the preferred color.