Moby Dick

Smoking 3 lakers tomorrow. All are bigger than 9 lbs. Never smoked one as big as the biggest which is 16 lbs.

Went out of St Joe, MI today. Hadn't been out in 3 weeks. Caught a 9 lb lake trout on a dipsy diver. First time I've caught something on a dipsy. Also had another hit on a dipsy diver that got off. Used my new Humminbird 788 CI HD DI today. Liked it but it has so many features I need to read up on. Caught the laker in 58 feet of water.

Had a testing delay. Took the boat to Paw Paw Lake in Coloma and it wouldn't start. Turned out, I had pulled a plug from my binacle control. Found it this afternoon and hopefully will get out and test it tomorrow.

Have the unit installed and will try it out in the St Joe river today. As usual, Lake Michigan is too rough to go out on.

Having a major problem with the installation. I have to pull the transducer cable through a tunnel under the floor. My tunnel was real full and the coax broke when I was pulling through my new transducer. I hope my buddy the electrician has a away of getting it through. Guess I pulled too hard.

Putting a new sonar/gps combo in the boat today. Bought a humminbird 788 CI HD with down imaging. Had to replace my eagle because its loran C was no longer usable. Anyone on here using this one?

Wrong.......15 mph from the north and a downpour kept me off the lake. Last Saturday, My brother and friend caught 3 Chinook. The 2 biggest were 16 and 14 lbs. Pretty nice spring Kings.

Going out Wednesday morning out of St Joseph. Going to try for some Kings as I've heard some have been caught. 1st fishable day in a week.

Went out of New Buffalo at 7:30 this morning. Didn't look very bad till we got to the end of the piers. Went out past the piers to see if it was calmer but found some really rough water. Too much for my 16'7" Whaler. Never even put a line down. Well, maybe next Monday will be fishable.

For those of you that run your bags from midship, where do you net your fish at? I have a board across the rails in the rear of the boat to mount my downriggers, so I always net my fish off to one side near the center console. Do the midship rigged bags run under the boat or off to the side?

I have no side cleats for attaching them. I was concerned to let them go to far back as they could hamper netting a fish. They pull so hard, I'm concerned about attaching them to the side rails. I guess I'm going to have to attach them each with their own rope from the front. I will lengthen the ropes to get them further back.

I just bought 2 amish 18 inch trolling bags. I tried rigging them with 1 line coming off my bow chock. I tied the bags together so they would run between the keel and side sponsons. I have a 17 foot Boston Whaler Montauk which has a deep center keel and then smaller sponsons on each side. This setup didn't work. The bags were running about halfway back in the boat as I wanted to keep them out of the fish landing area. My minimum trolling speed was 2.8-2.9 mph in calm water without the bags. With the bags, I got my speed down to 2.2 mph but steering was very painfull. Seems like they should have made a bigger impact. I currently considering running both bags off the bow chock each with their own line and tie the backs of each to the side rails near the console. Anyone have any suggestions?

The strong winds has made it unfishable for a long time. Seems like the wind has been 20 mph+ for the last week. Looks like Thursday we might be able to get out. Want some more coho's for the smoker.

Weather on the east side of Lake Michigan predicts nothing good through Tuesday. Itching to get back out.

Time it took to smoke my coho's. All gone now.

A buddy and myself smoked 12 cohos this morning. Turned out really good. Used cedar chips and hard maple. Made 4 of them peppered cohos. Only 1/2 of one left.

Caught 3 coho this morning. Probably should have caught more but started 5 miles north of piers and didn't catch anything. Picked up the lines and went 1 mile south of the piers and caught 3 fairly quickly. My buddy works afternoons so we only fished about 2 1/2 hours.

Had an old teacher friend who tracked his perch catch. Never caught many until June 20th. He used to catch about 2000/year.

Going out tomorrow to try and catch some coho's. Going to to use my trolling bags for the 2nd time. They worked good the first time as it gave me a much greater range of trolling speed. Hopefully, we'll be in by 10:00 with 10 coho's for the smoker.