Sea Eagle

Also, im not sure how big time of day is but we don't really fish extreme morning or night. If we go in the morning we are out at around 9am or so and if we go out at night we are back in before sunset.

Fishing a glow program before first light or at last light can be some of the most productive times to fish. That alone might put 2-3 more fish in your box per trip.

We also catch a few more fish close to noon. It's amazing how many times we put another fish or two in the box as we are pulling lines around noon.

Also, im not sure how big time of day is but we don't really fish extreme morning or night. If we go in the morning we are out at around 9am or so and if we go out at night we are back in before sunset.

Fishing a glow program before first light or at last light can be some of the most productive times to fish. That alone might put 2-3 more fish in your box per trip.

We also catch a few more fish close to noon. It's amazing how many times we put another fish or two in the box as we are pulling lines around noon.

I sure love my Big Jon Pro Tournaments. They seemed to be a good choice between the captins packs and the brutes.

They came with the ball holders, two rod holders per DR and auto stops.

I paid around $900 for a pair.

Whatever brand you choose, buy them at one of the winter/spring fishing shows. There will never be a better price that at the show.

Heading out myself this morning. Just needed to check the reports first. Thanks for the info.

Sounds like they are not wet sanding the old finish and priming it with the right stuff,I have painted for years auto and now spoons and if you don't do it right it will just come off.Are they clearing it ??

Not sure, but I'm going to ask more specific questions about cleaning and priming when I take it in this year for winterization this year.

I'm looking for some help on a problem with the paint on my 2003 150 Optimax.

The dealer put some unprotected banding tape around the skeg of my motor two years ago when they shrink wrapped my boat and the wind and vibration over the winter wore the paint off of my skeg.

The dealer has painted my skeg several times, but the paint keeps washing off. They have assured me that they are using the correct paint, but I wonder if there is a special aluminum primer that they need to be using?

Thanks

I'm looking for suggestions for a good canvas guy (or gal) in the Kalamazoo area to make a custom mooring cover for my 21 ft Trophy WA hardtop.

Thanks

I had a similar problem with my 2003 150 Optimax this spring that the dealer could not find.

The boat would not get up on plane and I had lost about 10 mph from my top end.

Nothing showed up on any error codes. They said I needed new plugs and a fuel filter and wanted an arm and a leg to do that, so I purchased the parts on line and replaced them myself.

However that did not solve the problem, so back to the dealer I went. This time they found a bad coil on my #5 cyl. This did fix the problem for a couple of trips, then it returned.

Only this time, the boat cut out on me as I was running in and I received an alarm. I turned the boat off and checked the error message and it said that I had a bad coil. I restarted the boat and it ran fine. This time the dealer had an error code to work with and they said that Mercury told them to replace all of the coils.

I checked it out when it was done and noticed that the new coils are a different part number. I bet they had a design issue with the original coils.

This did fix my problem for good and the motor has run fine for the last three months.

Not sure if this helps - good luck.

Went fishing Saturday morning with friend Jeff Moreau out of South Haven. Wound up going 9-11. 8 Kings and one nice Steelhead.

Set lines around 6:45 in 70 feet of water straight out from the pier head running a glow program of mostly Moonshine spoons. Took our first fish around 100’ and had fairly steady action out to 135’ (4-6) off of our down riggers and dispeys. Most productive depths were between 55’ and 75' down. Glow bloody nose, TNT and mongolian beef all took fish.

Switched over to a mix of spin doctors/flys and J-plugs in all of the usual colors as the sky brightened up and it went dead for us as we ran back in to 110’ of water and out to 135’ again a couple of times.

Thanks in part to several posts I have read on the web page about guys catching fish all day long on Moonshine spoons, I decided to switch back over to all moonshine spoons mid morning and took two more fish, then our last three around noon as we trolled back towards the pier to 110’ -100’ of water with a dispey down to 55’ and SWR on the down riggers down to 75’ & 85'. Glow bloody nose and mongolian beef again.

I have never ran glow spoons at any other time other than dark or low light conditions before, but you can bet that this will not be the last time.

One question – my lead core (1/2 & full) and copper (200’ & 300’) seem to have gone cold on me the lately. This is the first time I have ever experienced this. I also seem to catch more fish the past two years off of spoons than my flashers and flys. Is it just me or has any one noticed the same thing?

This salmon fishing is a lot like women – just when you think you have it all figured out………..

http://www.greatlakesfisherman.com/gallery/files/3/1/9/09-03-11_glf.jpg

You coulda left one of those spins for me:grin: been a few browns bein caught a buddy of mine got a cpl yesterday too you may know him, Chad he runs the RED BARON i believe he got his around same water

Might just as well have, I had all three down on Saturday with out a hit.

Fishwhisperer and I ended 3 for 5. 2 Kings and a laker. 118-120fow was our best. Blue meat rigs on wire out 150-200' were best. Frog SD with Mountain Dew Fly took 2 fish. No hits on core or copper 2 trips in a row.

Same here. Not sure why. Core has always been a great producer and the new copper I started running last year works great as well. I have been running 1/2 & full cores and 200' & 300' of copper without much success lately, most fish have been coming off of the DD and DR.

We were out Saturday in the morning before the storm and wound up 2-3. Had a small undersized laker hit the slider on the DR and a king hit the glow bloody nose spoon running at the ball as we were bringing in the laker. We choose to net the king and let the laker shake off (that's my story and I'm sticking with it).

The other king came on a magnum DD set on #1 back 130' with one of those new luhr jensen UV j-plugs (green).

Had two hits on a magnum dipsey set on #2 back 145' with a spin doctor (don't know the name - it is blue or green depending how you look at it with a glow crush back)

I figured out that the spin doctor I was referring to was a "Kevorkian" I went up to D&R Sports here in Kalamazoo this afternoon and purchased the last two they had. Heading out tomorrow morning.

Great job on the brown. Too bad loosing the big one. I have never caught one, but sure would like to.

We were out last night and lost 3 out of our four fish. I do not know what the deal is, earlier this year we went 21 fish in a row without a single loss.

A buddy of mine was out last night as well and went 4 -12. At least he had equipment failures, tangles, ect. as an excuse.

I'm bummed we only got hit four times.

Had two hits on a magnum dipsey set on #2 back 145' with a spin doctor (don't know the name - it is blue or green depending how you look at it with a glow crush back) another hit on the same dipsey with a moonshine TNT spoon and landed the fish on 300' of copper with my mystery spoon (see this post - http://www.greatlakesfisherman.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22899&highlight=spoon)

Hope to get out again on Sunday.

Great job - Going out Thursday night. Hope to see you out there.

I ordered a six pack of the Scotty bead stops from Bass Pro last night for $4.99.

Coughed up the extra $18 to get them here by tomorrow, so I could get ready for the weekend.

Looks like I could have saved myself $18 if I had checked the forecast first:

SATURDAY

SOUTH WINDS 10 TO 15 KT BECOMING EAST. CHANCE OF

SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS. WAVES 1 TO 3 FT.

SATURDAY NIGHT

NORTHEAST WINDS 10 TO 20 KT. CHANCE OF SHOWERS.

WAVES 4 TO 7 FT.

SUNDAY

NORTH WINDS 15 TO 25 KT. SLIGHT CHANCE OF SHOWERS.

WAVES 5 TO 8 FT.

Thanks to everyone. I'm going to check out the scotty beads.

Thanks again

Help!

Lost my first depth raider probe off of my DR this weekend. It looks like the cable failed at the crimp for the auto stop bead that my Big Jon Pro Tournament DR’s use.

Did I use a poor crimping technique?

I was wondering if anyone has a better idea for rigging the auto stop bead. Would a good epoxy work to hold the bead on the DR cable?

Any other suggestions?

I have never stacked above a SWR but in theory it's probably possible. I would NEVER run a slider on a SWR.

I run sliders on my SWR all of the time, just as long as I'm only running a spoon at the ball. I know of guys who run a fixed slider with a spin doctor, but I'm not that brave.

Fished out of SH Saturday morning. Went 5-7, 4 kings and a laker. Biggest king was 18 lbs.

Don't have all of the details since there were only two of us on the boat and all of the fish came between 6:45 and 9:00 to keep up with the log book.

I do know that 4 of the five came on moonshine glow bloody nose spoons on either the bottom spoon or on the slider of both DR SWRs. Not sure what the other fish hit, it was on either the 200' or 300' of copper.

We fished straight out from the pier to north from 50 ft of water to 100 feet of water with the fish hitting spoons set down at 45 to 65 feet in 70 feet to 90 feet.

No letters on the spoon. I have checked out all of the on-line catalogs for any spoon manufacturer I can think of - all to no avail.

Nice job - Nice king.

We caught a 15 lb king on Saturday and saw the guys from the Eliminator at the fish cleaning shed that had 3.

Hope this is just the start of the kings moving back. Nice cold water down below as opposed to last season when there was no cold water to be had.

Hoping this August is a good one.

Come on Kings.

Went 3-4 out of SH on Saturday AM. Fished 80 - 100 feet of water mostly straight out from the pier, but did go slightly north and south during the morning. All fish came in 90ish feet of water.

Lost a fish (looked like a king) on a slider set up on DR/SWR that got tangled up with a spin doctor on the other DR. Not sure if the king was the cause of the tangle or if it was the Crazy Ivan turn (reference Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October) that we had to take when three sailboats motored straight through the pack of fishermen. One poor guy had to completely shut down to avoid the sailboats. Our cause could have been helped if the guy to the south of us had turned away to his port. We were forced to turn in (hard) and run between everyone to keep from getting cut off to the south.

Wound up with a nice steelhead taken on 300’ of copper with my mystery spoon (see attached photo). This spoon has taken over half of my fish recently. I sure wish I knew who made it. I’m scared to death I’m going to loose it.

Also tossed down one of the new Luhr Jensen UV J plugs (green) that took a 15 lb king in a SWR on the DR set at 65’.

Switched over a couple of other lines to J Plugs and took a laker on the other DR/SWR down 75’ with a wonderbread J Plug.

I have not been out for a couple weeks now (up in Canada on a fishing trip) and was wondering is anyone is doing any good out of South Haven.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Fished in Chapleau last week. Took a couple days to figgure it out. They were just coming off of a Mayfly hatch from the previous week and our usual program of trolling crank baits behind planer boards was only good for one fish (5.2 lbs).

Down sized to jigs and crawlers and used the electric trolling motor and started getting into them. Here are a couple of fish photos and the view out the window of our cabin.

Nice Job Andy! I did the auto pilot this spring and will never do with out. It's a definite marriage and friend saver.

I would still be your friend even without the auto pilot