Sea Eagle

Every one of us addicts started with that first fish. Welcome to the club.

That was one more than we caught on our last trip. Heading over to Lahe Erie this weekend to see if we can scratch up some walleye.

Played hooky from work on Friday and took a co-worker, his step dad and step brother fishing in South Haven. The day got off to an auspicious start when we pulled up to the gate at the boat launch only to find it "out of service" and the attendant missing in action. To make a long story short, thanks to the efforts of the good folks at Pyles Porthole and one of South Havens finest, the attendant was located and let us in shortly after 7:00.

The short and sweet of it is in spite of being "all in" (all 12 lines in the water) with a mix of DR, DD, lead core and copper, running a mix of mostly spoons with a few SD/fly combos tossed in, we were only able to scratch up one 10-12 king off of the DR/SWR with a UV blue dolphin spoon. Might have missed a couple more since we had a tripped DD and found out we were missing the spoon on the other DR when we pulled lines. The late start might have cost as a couple of fish, but we put a long 6 hours on the water fishing between 70 ft of water to 170 ft of water, North and South, with most of our time spent between 85 to 110 ft.

Here is the most disturbing aspect, in spite of spending six hours on the water we only marked a couple of small fish and one big fish. We only saw a couple of very small bait balls and only one decent bait ball. In more then ten years of fishing the big water, I have never seen the sonar screen so blank. Heck even on other days when we were not catching fish the sonar at least said there were fish to be had.

Where are the fish? Seems like we should have at least snagged something with all of that claptrap dragging behind the boat. Are all of the dire predictions about the health of the salmon fishery coming home to roost?

Went 5-5 this morning out of SH with Fish Hawk. 3 kings, 1 coho and 1 lake trout. All fish came in 90 ft of water +/- 10 ft. Fished out to 110 and back in to less than 60 ft on the way in. Straight out down to the south and back.

1/2 core with an orange killer spoon took two. 10 color with a carmel dolphin spoon took two and 200 ft of copper with a pink alewife spoon took the last fish.

Down riggers running as deep as 75 ft and as shallow as 55 ft caught zip as did the sliders on the down riggers. Could not get the 300 ft of copper to fire either.

Great job

I always find it neat how catching one big king will turn a slow day into a good day. Nice fish. Enjoy the new boat.

Good job guys

Thanks for the very detailed report. Info junkies like me just love it. This is what GLF is all about.

Great job. We went 5-7 out of SH on Saturday. Kind of slow this year. Last year we were getting out limit in just a few hours. Not sure if we are going to see any of that action this year or not. But it's all good as long as you are putting fish in the box. Welcome to GLF

Went 5-7 out of SH this morning.

Set lines west of pier head in 60 ft of water and trolled out to 120 ft. Picked up a small king in 90 ft of water on a DR/SWR with a UV blue dolphin spoon down 75 ft.

Turned around and came back into 90 ft of water and picked up a nicer king on a 1/2 core with an orange killer spoon. Caught a real nice coho on the same rig around noon.

Lost a fish n 200 ft of copper with my mystery spoon (kind of a holographic mixed veggies with black and white spots - see photo). Took a large king on the same set up later.

Missed a fish on the same DR/SWR - UV dolphin spoon down at 85 ft in 100 ft of water and picked up a lake trout on an identical set up on the other down rigger down at 75 ft.

Best depth was 90 ft +/- 10 ft

Thanks for the great report

Very nice job guys.

Sounds like Denny is enjoying retirement with mid week fishing.

NICE.

This was his first time out this year. He was up north turkey hunting over the last two weekends. Seems like he has too much going on. Must be rough.

Fished South Haven this morning with Sea Hawk (Denny). Went 4 for 4. 3 Lakers and a large King. The two larger Lakers weighed 16 & 17 lbs and the King weighed in at 19 lbs. according to the DNR guy at the fish cleaning shed.

Set lines around 7:30 in 110 ft of water NW of Pier. Trolled out to 170 and back for four hours without a nibble, so we decided to head in.

First fish hit at 11:30 inside 100 ft of water and last fish hit as we were pulling lines around 1:30 inside of 60 ft of water.

All three Lakers were taken with a three color SWR on the DR bouncing bottom with a UV Blue Dolphin spoon. The king hit a UV Carmel Dolphin spoon on a full core.

Amazing how a couple of large fish can turn a bad trip into a good trip.

http://www.greatlakesfisherman.com/gallery/files/3/1/9/05-08-2013_glf_thumb.jpg

Thanks for the report.

Real nice to have this information closer to home. I will check it prior to every trip. Thanks

Thanks for the reminder billrudy. The reason I went with the Scotty beads in the first place is because I had a failure at the crimp and lost everything including my depth raider probe

Thanks for the report. Was going to go out deep myself this weekend if I get the chance to get out. I've been wondering how deep we needed to go to find some clear water.

Great job

I've never had this problem with my autostops' date=' but I have had them slide on me when using different methods to try to keep them in place.[/quote']

FYI- I put a couple of the smaller Scotty bead stops on either side of the larger Big Jon auto stop bead along with a dab of super glue and they have never slipped again

Great job on the lakers. I wonder where all of the silver fish are? I wonder if all of the dirty water is shutting down the coho and king fishing or its just the cold spring? The six million dollar question is will we have anything other than lake trout to catch this spring down here?

Thanks for the report. Hit the kalamazoo for steelhead and the maumee for walleye this weekend without success. Looks like its time to drag the big boat home and hit the big lake

Hit the Grand Rapids fishing show in March. You can find some good prices on lures and such and sometimes a better selection.

Where you can really save money is on big ticket items. There are usually manufacturers discounts available at the spring show that will not be available latter in the year.

I would like to attend and have a couple of buddies would would like to come with me

I still run leadcore and copper.

I think it depends on how many lines you can run. Depending on how many people I have in the boat and what water depth I want to target - I will run a 1/2 core and a full core along with 200 and 300 feet of copper, dipseys and my down riggers. This set up allows me to cover the entire water column from 25 ft on down to whatever depth I'm running my Down Riggers at.

If there are only a couple of people in the boat I might stick the leadcore out on one side of the boat and the copper out on the other until I find out what depth the fish are biting in and switch the other side out to whatever is working.

You can cover the same depths as the leadcore using copper, but I believe that sometimes it is a good thing to be further back from the boat in shallower water. Others talk about the different action leadcore imparts to your spoons - Who knows.

I do know that having both set ups just gives you more choices.

We were in Manistee last week and drove around portage lake on Friday after the rain chased us off of the big lake. Did not drop the boat in since we were heading out on Saturday. But we were curious a out the fishing. Thanks for the report. We will keep it in mind for the next trip.

Stop into insta launch next year, we do the hot board and gives you insite on where the fish are that we found them

We stayed there on this trip. Nice store. Lots of big lake stuff. We might look for something less rustic next trip. Getting too old or just too lazy for camping.