jdh

So they're still there, just a bit deeper down. Nice work!

Love the mud. Should be more fish each time the lake flips moving forward here!

The successful lured have been 2 oz EJ jigs. Jigging the lure straight, no bait. The for bait, I've just been putting an alewife on a slip bobber set at 30 feet or so. And then on the other one I run a basic slip rig for the pier with a 1 oz weight and a 6 foot leader. But so far, no bites on bait. Maybe helps bring the fish in? Its been hard to keep the bait from tangling up.

Took of work early and took my dad fishing. Launched at 5 pm and got some bait on sabiki rigs before running to Little Point. Saw a charter? working 80 fow or so, so ran a mile past them and spot locked in 70 fow. Dropped two bait rods and started jigging. About 15-20 minutes later charter shows up honking at me and complaining that I set up in front of them. And aggressively pulling boards to make space. They had half a mile inside of us or 80 miles outside. Not sure on etiquette here but in my opinion a 5 degree course correction a little early would have solved their issue. Also I can't move very fast with my motor off running spot lock... Anyway their boat noise pushed some fish our way and we had our first fish pretty fast. And the rest of the night was pretty successful. Ended up 2/6 jigging with 1 coho 1 king. At 8:45 started trolling back to port and had a spectacular hour of fishing going 5/7. Still in 70-100 fow. 3 color went, 100 copper went, down riggers went with spoons. Then my meat rig on a diver took 4 hits and go two nice kings to the boat including an 18 lb fish. Diver back 55 ticking back to 80. Never made it to 80 - each time got hit on the way down Meat rig was on a 10" chrome spin doctor dragon slayer. Was running a whole salted and alewife that I salted after a Ludington trip a few weeks ago. That one alewife survived all 4 strikes and was still good to send back but we decided a 7 fish box was good enough and opted to run back to port before it got really dark out. Waves were, well there were no waves. It was glass out there and the water temp was from 50-60 degrees.

Didn't feel like posting a whole new thread. Tried the jigging thing again Saturday afternoon. Wasn't able to find any bigger concentration of fish, but had maybe 6 or 7 follows between 3 of us on the boat and got one nice king in on a white EJ jig 2 oz. Seemed to me with the flip, most of the fish were in the upper 20 feet which makes jigging a bit more tricky. Fished 80-120 fow by the point.

Took a short trip this morning. Primarily wanted to catch some alewives, which was accomplished fairly quickly in the harbor with a sabiki rig. Put some in salt but kept a few in the livewell. After running out to 70 fow I stopped and dropped an alewife down, and started jigging with my second rod. Had many fish swim in interested and had 4 hits. Ended up catching a coho. At 11 I decided to troll back north towards port, but although I had multiple fish following the flasher fly on the downriggers, only had 1 hit on a diver back 70 feet with the flasher fly. Pulled lines around 12:30.

I was in 70-90 fow. Also right around 9:30 LiveScope started marking schools and schools of bait fish.

Ran generally the same program as the other night. Couldn't get the fish to bite. Had them on Livescope swimming at/after baits, but they wouldn't hit. Tried S/SE/SW/E/W/N/NW,NE trolling directions... Speeds between 2 and 3 mph at the ball. Eventually had a hit almost at 9 pm. Then another at 9:30. Another at 10 pm. And the fourth, which stuck hit at 10:25 pm. All fish felt nice sized and the one we got was maybe 12 lbs. Meat rig on a mag diver back 90 took two hits, 250 copper with mag moonshine jackal took one hit, and our last hit came on the downrigger down 20 feet with a mag moonshine double trouble. Might try again tomorrow night.

Fished this evening out of Holland and maintained SSE/SSW trolls down past Saugatuck. Set lines at 7 pm, and had 6 fish by 9:30. Then craziness happened and over about 10 minutes 8 of 9 rods hooked up. We landed 6 of those 8. But ended up with no lines in the water . Reset, and turn north and had several more hits in the dark, and got one of those to the boat. Overall ended up with 13 fish in the box - majority from 4-12 lbs, and 4 fish in the 15-18 lb range. Of course several ones that got away felt like they were in that size range. 12 kings, 1 coho. Thanks to @2MD for the previous nights report. Used that to generally help us figure out where to set up. So what was our program? 75-90 fow with SSW/SSE trolls - SSW had more bites, but both trolls picked up fish. SOG around 2.8 when I checked. Speed at the ball was 2.3-2.6 most of the night. All depths and almost all of our lures got fish. Rods were: 150 copper - standard size moonshine RV Happee Meal (3 hits) 250 copper - mag moonshine rv raspberry carbon (3 hits) standard diver back 85 to 115 - pro king 8" paddle chrome UV and yellow ladder back and fly (3 hits) rigger @ 40 - mag moonshine slider / standard moonshine main - both RV Flounder pounder (NO HITS ALL NIGHT) rigger @ 60 - pro king 8" paddle white dragon slayer with fly (4 hits) mag diver back 85 to 115 - 10" spin doctor doctor chrome dragon slayer and meat rig (ballyhoo strips) (4 hits) 300 copper - mag moonshine rv double trouble (2 hits) 200 copper - mag moonshine rv jackal (2 hits) 100 copper - stingray size orange tuxedo gold (2 hits) I'll post picture of the lineup below.

Way to dial them in! Of course I had most of my lines in the 45-65. And they didn't produce. The few lines above and below that got our fish. Wish I had gotten a third person last night to run those extra lines!

Wonder what the difference is on the issues we all have with line/tackle failures. I've been running slide divers for 12 years, and never had the mono break. I did lose three of them running braid before that though. I've also had too many experiences with braid braking on downrigger releases / planer board releases. I'd like to see some ninja diver reviews after a full season. Generally it looks like people are liking them so far. -JDH

After dark started marking lots of hooks in bottom 20 feet from 220 to 150 fow. A lot more hooks in the 220-180. Wonder what was going on. No way for my boat to get lines that deep.

Tried to find fish tonight under the full moon. Graph was blank. Got two 3 or 4 lb kings in 250 fow right at 9:30. Nothing after that. Fished all the way in to 40 fow.