Mega Byte

Nice box of silver. I hope to get out next week.

I've had days where I fished in the fog and the fish never slid out deeper as the morning progressed. With the smoke in the air, it's possible they stay shallower longer.

Love those silvers. Nice job.

Awesome night!

I'm trying to stay in my lane on this thread and keep it fishing report related, but I did want to note what I've used to help catch them. If you want to discuss the Magic Bait Ball, we can do it here:

Pics Sent from my SM-G991U using Great Lakes Fisherman mobile app

This was a combination work trip and fun trip. I hadn't been fishing Memorial Day due to the Magic Bait Ball project and winds...just seemed windy this May. From the work side, the goal was to get some top side and underwater video. So that meant that when I normally would be swapping out lures or lines, I was messing with video stuff or trying to get a new downrigger installed. So the long lines obviously weren't working for me, but I never made time to swap them out. I ran 1 rigger with the Magic Bait Ball, 4 dipsies and 4 long lines. All 10 bites came on the rigger and dipsies. Time FOW Toll Fish Bait Pole 7:15 AM 84 SW Miss Mongolean Beef RV Rigger down 50 7:16 AM 84 SW King Bloody Nose RV mag High Diver out 190 8:04 AM 108 S King Grean Flounder mag Wire diver out 120 down 57 8:15 AM 132 SW Miss Bloody Nose RV mag High Diver out 212 8:20 AM 134 S King Grean Flounder mag Wire Diver out 121 down 57 8:21 AM 134 S King Mongolean Beef RV Wire Diver out 121 down 57 8:38 AM 137 SW Coho Grean Flounder mag Wire Diver out 121 down 57 8:50 AM 139 SW Steelhead Blue Jeans RV mag High Diver out 190 9:00 AM 119 SE Miss Grean Flounder mag Rigger down 50 9:54 AM 151 N King Blue Jeans RV mag High Diver out 190 On the work side, a quick glance shows we got some underwater footage of the lure, but for some reason the strikes were not captured. I'll have to play with that more. On the positive side, the new downrigger did get installed and I'll be able to utilize it on the next trip. I'll add some pictures in the comments.

That's a great story. I've never heard of that happening before with Salmon. I saw a video where a guy hooked a walleye and was pulling it in and it got slammed by a pike. The pike wouldn't let go and he was able to net both fish. Crazy. If there are a lot of small kings and cohos around, I'll sometimes put more mag spoons out, thinking the larger hooks make it harder for those small fish to bite. Some still do though.

Beautify night on the water, but it sucks losing them at the boat. It's tricky netting them yourself.

Yeah. 1 sheepshead and 13 kings in that trip. Sent from my SM-G991U using Great Lakes Fisherman Mobile App

I heard that fishing was good from 120 to 140 FOW, but I never made it that far out. That sonar looked like it had a lot to say while we were motoring out, so I slowed down to check. There were a lot of fish on the sonar. I suspected the temperature was all wrong, but this time of year that is less important, so I decided to set lines in 80 FOW on a SW troll, right out in front of the pierheads at 6:30 am. By 100 FOW, we had stopped marking fish and didn't have any bites. So it was decision time: keep heading SW and get out to 120 FOW, or swing back inside and give it one more try. We swung back inside and got our first bite in 93 FOW. We kept it on a south troll and stayed in 90 to 95 FOW the whole time. The temp 75 ft down was 62. It did get down to 58 further south. This is warmer water than I would normally fish, but there were a lot of fish on the sonar and they were biting, so we stayed in it. Our shallowest line was 50 down. We ran some lines 85 down, but had more luck with them when we raised them up to 75 down. Here's what we fished (9 rod spread): 2 for 2: Rigger down 75 green lightening glow plug 0 for 0: captain's choice natural glow plug, then a white slick paddle and pickled sunshine fly Wire divers were set between 50 down and 85 down. They took fish when I dialed them Into 74 to 77 feet down. I have a SmartTroll system, so I focus on that more than the feet of line out. I think they were out about 180 feet. We ran a pink pearl plug for a bit, but no bites. When I pulled it, it had hit bottom. I switched it out for a magnum green knight spoon and it got bit within 10 minutes. On the other side we ran a green glow spin doctor and meat rig and that was 2 for 3. On my long lines, I switched out from copper to weight steel (WS) this year. On the port side of my boat, I added 2 colors of lead (Pb) to each of the long lines. It gave me more sway in the current than running copper alone, and gave me more depth flexibility when I was running small spreads. I kept that same setup when I switched to WS. Given the flexibility of WS, that might not have been necessary. 2 for 3: 200 WS + Pb 5 eyes magnum 2 for 3: 250 WS + Pb wonderbread magnum 2 for 2: 300 WS + Pb green jeans magnum 2 for 2: 250 WS Bad Toad magnum 1 for 1: 300 WS Wart Frog magnum Speed at the ball was 2.1 to 2.3. 16 bites on the S troll, one on the north, but we only trolled north from 11:00 to 11:30 when we pulled lines. The biggest fish was 19.5#. We threw back a sheepshead which hit on the 300 WS + Pb as I was setting it out. We threw back 2 smaller kings too. So we kept 11. Sent from my SM-G991U using Great Lakes Fisherman Mobile App

Dang...that's a lot of fun a huge box of fix. Wow.

Nice job guys.

Nice job Randy.

Looks like a fun trip!

I don't have my notes so I'll make this quick. We started setting lines around 7:00 and fished until 1:30. We had heard fish were deep (200+ FOW) but with the NE wind, the Seagull system was predicting colder water by Little Point Sable, so I thought we'd check that out before running deep. We did find some colder water. We set up in 145 FOW, outside of a few other boats, and put it on a SW troll. Our first hit was in 154 FOW. We took most of our fish in the 160 - 170 FOW, but we did hear they caught some inside of us as well. We did pick up a few out to 195 after lunch. Baits in the top 50 feet did well. 3 color down to 250 WS took fish. All bites were on long lines. Mostly regular sized spoons. Lots of orange and gold. One flasher fly bite. All fish were on the smaller side, nothing over 10 pounds. It was a mix of lakers, steel, coho and kings. I didn't hear of any mature kings being caught.

That's a solid outing for a short trip. Nice job.

We found some fish, but lost more than usual. We also had two unusual equipment failures where we had breakoffs on our 100 Cu and 3 color lines. I left a couple of Church planer boards floating out there. We set up a bit shallower than planned, because we saw some marks on the sonar. We were about 6 miles NW of St. Joseph. While we did get some bites under 100 FOW, they were very small fish. Once we got to 120+ we got into some nicer fish. We made a NW troll for a while and had a lot of bites, often with two or three on at once. We circled back and went through the same area with not much to show for it. We turned back NW to work out deeper, thinking they may have slid out. They did. We got into the fish again in 140+ FOW. We marked fish pretty consistently out to 178 which is where we ended up after all the lines were pulled. Most of the kings we caught were 10 - 13 pounds. Nothing huge, but nice fish. Details are below. I'll be back out there Tuesday morning for my last St. Joe trip of spring. Oh, the "red" spoon, I can't remember the name of it. It's got red and some orange on it. And some pics.