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Thanks Kevin these take the cake! My kids and I are can't stop laughing ..here are a couple more PUG aint too proud and he can laugh at himself too - he says hey man it's the only look i got!

Happy New Year! Nice work guys! PUG has migrated south in search of the mighty Silver King. He smashed em last year and has a good feeling about this year too!

haha - i was waiting for that response Kevin

interesting you have identified the same pattern with naturals! yep I know you are very detailed and track things well. PUG knows a very smart captain in GH who has been doing this for 40 years and he explains it to him this way - the DNR screws up the stocking and here's how - at the weir where they harvest eggs and sperm they have 4 full time employees that all they do is pull kings out of a catch pen and extract eggs and sperm... all day long and all week long they do this. Now he says that he has sat and watched them work several times and they are not large adult individuals but more your 90-110 pound build and that then to no suprise when it comes to selecting fish to extract from that 90% of the time they pick the smaller scrawny less healthy ones and leave the big pigs down in the pen. Hence what happens is the plants have the less than superior dna & genes in most cases and/or the plants are not the behemoth 4yr dna but instead most likely your 2year old jack or 3yr old early runner. Makes sense to PUG. Makes sense to me too. Nonetheless quite frustrating. There is not a charter captain or amateur angler that wouldn't volunteer to do this work for free if it helped the fishery! PUG is even more contrarian and while the DNR has insisted for decades that there is no natural reproduction in the kzoo river he has spent a bunch of time up around swan creek in the fall and doesn't buy it for a second. They get it done up there and some of these naturals return every fall.

yes it has also been very very slow off GH for the few charters that ran trips this weekend (oldest son told me) the ones my kids and pugs got this weekend on Parker were DEEP - riggers down 110 with heavy ball - deep diver out 260 - high diver out 290 if you even can call it a high diver at that point all the graph bait and marks on top were just a distraction i guess... pug says be patient - cold water is coming... already 50 some degrees 60down in 90fow this evening according to the PS buoy... another day of east wind and pug is betting we can nail 3yr olds inside 100fow or better yet big kings in that 25-40fow

interesting photos ATTACHED I'd say 95% of the mature fish of substance (those weighing 15# plus) and we caught scores of them this fall had an unclipped fin and were naturals

thanks and PUG took a few of my kids out at sunrise this morning without me (i have a sailing regatta) and from the pics they sent me they are getting into some more nice silver fish in that 150-200fow beautiful sunrise east wind makes it a rough monster though! 717164522.3gp

trolled for only about an hour while bringing boat around from west olive to holland tonight too warm to try in close so buzzed out to 170fow and setup there absolutely insane marks on graph top to bottom ended up 2for3 on three year old chinook was a blast what worked was white paddle out 220 on deep diver and also the other deep diver out 200 and then the rigger down 106 with spoon

maybe this is old news but my son reports that CG & State Police did in fact discover & retrieve the body (charter boats saw it) directly off GH in that 60-70fow

You guys are smart how you are doing it. I don't fish alone no more and am always with the kids (and pug) it seems but even with kids you wanna talk about and have a plan if someone goes over and we do. When I was much younger I used to be pretty reckless and stupid. Super rough water and fishing alone a lot... invisible I felt. Then at a seminar I met some salmon fisherman who had their boat sink in 76 degree water and while they had life jackets and all shoot it didn't take long for hypothermia to start setting in. Fortunately someone randomly passed thru their part of the lake and saved em but a couple hours and those guys were messed up. Warmer surface temp and a life jacket and you can still be in a world of hurt I learned! such a beautiful lake... the deadliest in the US though

update from my son who works on the charter boats in GH - they are getting em real good trolling inside the channel this morning also he sent me this pic of the missing boat of the fisherman that went missing this week - so terribly sad...

thanks and good.luck to you if you do get out there in the next day or two - in the fall sometime 10am or 2pm in the afternoon is better than sunset so you never know please post a report so we can try to keep tabs on how many fish are still there gathering i have to go out of town for a sailboat race this weekend with my son - haven't told pug yet but he is gonna be grumpy when he finds out!

water has actually warmed some - didn't expect that (see satellite chart image) messed around trying lots of depths in close... slow start... buddy of mine got a few going in that 8-12fow by the pierheads so we tried that but just couldn't get a program going... all we got was a northern pike on a jplug 2 color - haha eventually we caught a coho in 35fow on dipsey flasher and then a chinook on the same dipsey flasher in 39fow and then after dark another chinook on a 3color with mongoose plug had to work way too hard for em tonight but PUG got a few 20230914_203113.mp4

The kids and I whaled on em again off Saugatuck tonight. Same program except they were in a little closer (25-32fow). Pouring rain and some 4foot waves starting out made it more challenging but we just stuck to the program and did what PUG had taught us. 5for8 dipseys were quiet tonight 6color went with bloody nose spoon 3colors went as did 5color with plugs rigger went 25down with glow spoon high line mono out 150' behind orange board with size5 goose went at sunset what a fall this has been! 20230911_181536.mp4 20230911_202750.mp4 20230911_195857.mp4 20230911_191726.mp4

nice!

Nice job! Intense scene and very impressive pulling that off solo. Thanks for the pic. JDH did you end up with a couple? FBD is going tonight and hopefully he can let us know the status of the bite...

6 for 7 on Salmon 3 for 3 on sheephead Salmon jumping everywhere - not eating so much though What a beautiful fall morning!

9for15 white flashers and plugs mixed in with a couple spoon bites pre-sunrise we were 5for10 already outfront once again, PUG put us on the fish Master Angler ALERT (second one in two weeks) 39.25inch silver chinook long boy thing has to weigh only 22 pounds 3year old on roids!?! LOL

right on for whatever it is worth my son said the Holland charters smoked em (lots of big silver fish even) in that 40-60fow off Holland yesterday morning who knows what happens next? even PUG is unsure... this late August cold water blurp was a gift though!

was in Grand Haven with boat yesterday evening took the opportunity to troll the channel and out in front of the pier heads after the sun went down... was a lot of fun certainly plenty of chaos and activity lost one on a dipset plug in the channel by the back of the boat scored on another just outside pierheads 30min after sunset on 5 color plug the ride back into Holland late in the moon light was beautiful

PUG has never been skunked but he came real close last night!

nice job tonight and thanks for the report we struggled amongst the pack of boats in tight off Saugatuck this evening not positive what changed... maybe a big group of kings already moved up river OR more likely they were just frightened by all the boat traffic which unfortunately is only going to get worse over the next 3-4 days... for whatever it is worth we seen more of them jumping all over tonight than we had seen all week we ended up just 1 for 2 on salmon and caught a sheephead andncatfish had buddies on three other boats doing the same and these guys are real good at it and I think one managed 4 and another 2 and the just 1 like me

one more video... 20230831_073331.mp4