Mega Byte

Thanks for the report. Hopefully something changes...

Another slow day for the few people I talked to out of Pentwater. We were 1 for 1 and it was a throwback king. We fished 55 - 185 fow. We found a good temp break from 51 degrees changing over to 46 degrees around 160 fow and down 70, but we didn't mark many fish. I didn't have any meat aboard so we ran 6 lines of spoons, plugs, and flies. At 10 am I asked on the radio for a fishing report out of Pentwater and I got was Charlie Brown who was 0 - 1. Stopped by the fish cleaning station to talk to a charter boat captain we saw come in from out deep. They said they got 2 kings early in 110 FOW and after nothing going for a while then went out to 240 FOW to get after the lake trout. We marked a few fish in warmer water between 45 ft down and 60 ft down. We had baits in the area, but nothing went. Troll speed at the ball was between 2.2 and 2.9. The one we got was on a UV Blue Dolphin on a free slider on a rigger set at 70' deep.

Monday was a rough morning. First skunk of the year. I didn't check the exact time, but I think we had our 6 lines set around 6:45 and we fished until 2. We started just north of the dunes in 80 FOW and were marking a lot of big arches right away. On the graph, it appeared like the bottom 10 feed was covered in bait with arches all around. No takers though. By the time we had made it just off the dunes, the arches and bait were gone. Very shortly after that, in 97 FOW we took a big rip on a wire diver, Kevin's GF spin doctor and meat rig. It was down 80'. He made a quick run and then gave two big head bangs and he was off. We decided to circle back around and try and run through all those marks of fish that we just came through. On this pass through, they were gone. So we turned south looking for fish and we worked out to deeper water. We spent the next 7 hours looking for fish and changing baits. We worked water all the way out to 185 feet. We were getting some decent marks between 75 and 110 foot down and we had a variety of baits down there. I had heard the fishing was good south of the point, so we headed south, but by the time we got south of the point, it was almost noon. We did find more marks in 160 FOW, down around 100 feet, but no hits. One thing we did on this trip was focus on the king bite, so we didn't have any lines up high in the warmer water. We had 50-degree water 100 feet down. By the end of the day, we had a lot of meat rigs out since that was what I was hearing was working and that was our only hit of the day. Maybe we had bad meat? It smelled fine, but it wasn't freshly purchased. We pulled lines around 2 PM. On the cruise back to port we noticed the surface temp was 2 degrees cooler just north of the dunes. It warmed a bit when we got closer to port. The lake was smooth and the weather was great and I got to spend a lot of time with my father, so despite the lack of fish, it was a good trip.

Does anyone know what the current is like in the bay? If there is not much of a current, his SOG and speed at the ball will be close enough to not worry about getting a speed probe.

I haven't been out since Jun 2nd. Just curious how the amount of bait in the lake compares to last year couple of years, which were pretty good I think.

Hopefully the kings start showing up soon. Thanks for the great report.

It depends on what you are pulling. Some baits run better slower (2.2) while others do fine around 3.0. I try to keep it around 2.5 - 2.7 mph at the ball. Speed at the ball is often different from SOG (Speed over ground, which is your surface GPS speed). Some days though, they prefer a faster or slower presentation. If you are doing turns, pay attention to if you get hits on your outside lines (which will be moving faster) or your inside lines (which will be moving slower).

Nice job killing the skunk!

Well, they went from stocking around 8 million kings a year in 1995 to a 330,000 last year. That is a huge change. The logic was the invasive mussels are messing up the food chain which is killing off the alewives, which is 99.9% of what the kings eat. However, I am amazed at much bait I've seen the last couple of years. And these kings are getting huge. I think we are catching more fish, and bigger fish now than we did when they stocked the salmon in the higher numbers 20 years ago. I know some guys and 1 charter captain that got out of salmon fishing - sold their boats and gear while there was still a market for it - thinking the collapse was inevitable like it was in Lake Huron. But, these low stocking numbers have allowed the alewives to rebound, and with them the salmon. What I was expecting to be the worst King fishing of my life has been some of the best these last two years, and now onto year 3. For 2018, the DNR now plans to stock 553,000 Chinook salmon, up from 330,000 that had been planned previously for this year.

My guess is you won't notice much of a difference cutting through the bones. You could probably argue that the 50 degree angle might hold it's edge longer. You might notice more of a difference trying to get skinny and strip those rib bones off of your fillet. I have the same sharpener (just ordered some bulk replacement belts last week) and I keep it simple and use the 40. But hey, you should do some research on this. Fish, fillet, report and repeat until we have a good sample size.