Mega Byte

What a difference two hours makes. This data is from the Ludington buoy. 1.2 feet to 4.1 feet in just two hours.

This guy is in WI, but does nice work: https://www.facebook.com/MitchMartinTaxidermy/photos/?ref=page_internal. Not sure if you're looking for a skin mount or a replica.

Nice catch!

Not all of the mature fish you catch later in the year need to be smoked. They'll go great in this chowder. We're eating some today and I froze some mature king and labeled them as "for chowder".

NIce! Sweet picture!

LOL. 😆 My daughters said, "Dad, we could do school from the boat! All we do is work on our Chromebooks anyway." I was actually trying to get some work done...just needed to get on the water, drop some lines and try and stay out of everyone's way. It was a pretty relaxing day. The original thought was any inefficiencies caused during the normal working day would be made up for by extending the working day until 9 PM, but I didn't stay that long. Yeah, and intern would have been helpful. The big King that hit on the rigger almost got into my diver lines twice. He stayed deep and tried running to the side. At that point I thought, yeah, maybe I should have invited someone to the office today to pull one of those dipsys up.

Yeah...but I think I owe my boss a few makeup hours...

It was 47 - 48 degrees 48 feet feet down, which is where I ran my rigger. Actually...it could have been a couple degrees warmer in 50 FOW. I spent most of my time in 54 - 65 FOW. I think I remember seeing 50 degrees on the probe when I was in 47 - 50 FOW.

Decided to move my remote office onto the boat for the day. I talked to a poor fella at the dock who hasn't had a bite in his last 5 trips to Ludington, including that AM when he fished North off the point. I saw a charter captain had an almost-skunk this morning so I wasn't really expecting to do much, but figured it was better than working indoors at a desk. Got lines set at 11:25 just in time for an 11:30 meeting. I started setting lines as soon as I cleared the pier heads. I had some nice marks in the upper 40s FOW so decided to work 50-ish FOW. I ran two braid slide divers and one rigger. I didn't run long lines because of the boat congestion. I started with a plug and spoon on the divers and a KGF spindoctor and meat rig on the rigger. I got lines set and put it on a S troll to work out of the boats. I took it all the way to the project and then spun it around and headed back North. During the trip South, I had several fish come up and inspect the rigger ball. It was down about 45 feet. Then they would slip back down and lay on bottom and disappear. I think there were a lot of fish we aren't marking that were just laying on bottom. I tried switching baits to see if I could turn those follows into biters. I tried different colors, sizes, flasher-flies, and a plug. I tried different colors and presentations on the divers too. Finally at 2:54 PM I had my first hit.. That 20.5 pound King made it into the box. It hit a blue and white spindoctor and Howie's double-aquafly. The diver was on a 3 setting 150 feet out which would have put it around 45 feet down. I had just put that bait on about 10 minutes prior so I was thinking Blue might be the way to go since it was the first time I had run Blue all day. I switched out the other high diver for a Blue J-plug. One the rigger I put an all white Ghostbuster paddle and meatrig. The Blue J-plug was the next to fire at about 4:35 PM. It was on a diver, #3 setting out 130 which should put it around 40 feet down. That was a 17# king. As that king was laying the next, the Blue/White spindoctor and fly went off again. (So, 4:45 PM-ish.) This one was set with 150' of line out to the slide-diver. This fish ended up getting off because my king that was in the net managed to get the J-plug hooks embedded in the fabric of the net and fish was hooked really with with both hooks. The fish I was fighting ended up getting off about 40' from the back of the boat. Because I was working to get the net available, i wasn't able to keep enough pressure on the fish. At 5:45 the rigger starts bouncing and then a big King gets airborne at the back of the boat. This one took a while to get it. There were many times I was sure it was going to get into one of the divers. I turned the boat to try to keep the fish centered in the back and that worked. I did a lot of circles, avoided other boats and managed to not tangle the other two lines. The 23# king made it into the boat. I also saw two more kings rolling on the surface when I was out there. I reset the lines and fished for another half hour without any more bites. It was starting to get really crowded out front and since I was by myself, so I decided to call it a day. I didn't want to get a fish on solo, get a tangle and manage that with so much boat traffic. All hits came in 54 to 62 FOW. Speed was 2.2 to 2.4. Enjoy the pictures. Here are the baits that took fish. The spin-doctor and fly took two hits. Rain started to move in to our North. I managed to stay dry the entire trip. 235# King: Not a bad box for a mid-day solo trip: Just beat this big boy back into port:

Nice trip! That is a busy morning all before 8:30. Well done.

This will help: http://www.educatedangler.com/magazine/from-the-field/1169-port-basics-ludington

When I have the kids on the boat, especially if I'm alone with them, trying to maintain a bottom bouncing setup as you navigate different depths with everything going on, it becomes a wasted line because I can't consistently keep it on bottom. Then you have the darn accidental releases where you have reset the whole rig or you get the small laker that doesn't trip the release that you drag around for a while. It's too much hassle for me on most of my trips. Maybe I need to train one of the girls to maintain the lake trout setup. They would probably enjoy that.

Yeah, I think I've had more one or two hit trips this year than I have ever had, but I also don't typically target lake trout.

Left the dock at 5:30 and headed out with my daughters. I had report from someone who fished that morning that said the fish had moved out a bit and were between 120 and 180 out front and bit South of port. So we started in 180 FOW out front. On the run out, I had some fullspeed marks in 165 so I had a hunch that is where we would find them. (My sonor sends back something if it marks a fish while we motor out. Sometimes it's fish, sometimes is just noise.) We stopped in 180 and got the kicker fired up and pointed the boat back to the SE and started setting lines. We didn't mark a fish until we hit 170 FOW but it was a good mark. We spent some time in the 160 to 170 range and marked some nice fish, but didn't have any takers, so we headed East. There were a number of boats in the 110 - 130 range and we worked in there. At 7:45 PM in 112 FOW the 250 Cu with a magnum Blue Jeans spoon took a hit. We boated a nice, small king that made for a great picture. We checked the 300 (Green Haze paddle and meat rig) to make sure there wasn't anything small on that and reset both lines. About 20 minutes later the same setup to another hit in 97 FOW, but it quickly got off. In the 160s, at 60 feet down the temp was in the low 50s. In at 81 fow, down 60 was 45 degrees. I think that colder down temp started around 115 FOW. There was a lot of bait in close. In total, we only spent about 45 minutes shallower than 120 feet and we took two hits. We probably would have done better if we had spent more time in there. But after that second hit, we started pulling lines to get the kids home. It was a fun trip even though we didn't have a lot of action. I did hear a report of a guy that got one in 150 FOW. I talked to another boat that got 2 coho and king, but I didn't ask their depth. Lots of bait in close:

The "60, 74,77,84" is that line out or FOW? On a 3 setting, if that's line out, that's pretty high in the water column. Were they out of temp or did you find some colder water?