Mega Byte

Pentwater 8/6 PM, 4 for 6 I was watching the surface temp maps after the storm and they showed some cold water just south of the lighthouse that later in the day warmed up a bit and moved north by the dunes. We fished between the north end of the dunes to the lighthouse and took fish from 75 to 110 fow. We started in close at 40 fow and marked a lot of bait fish between 40 and 60 fow, but didn't get any hits until we moved a little deeper. All hits were taken on a south troll. 75 fow, 250 Cu regular sized NBK spoon (lost a really nice fish) 110 fow, 62' down on a rigger, green jeans spoon: 16# king 107 fow, braid diver on a 3 setting, out 109' and down 40', Emerald Green Salmon Buster spoon: 16# king 85 fow, 250 Cu large blue haze paddle, 3 teasers and a meat rig: 22# king 90 fow, 200 Cu, blue spin doctor and blue fly: smaller fish, got off because my 9 year old wasn't paying attention and kept letting the line get loose ?? fow, SWR 1 color Pb, rigger down 45, Kevin's GF spid doctor and meat rig set up: Small king we found when pulling up some lines to land the big king. He didn't trip the release. I wanted to throw him back but he was hooked in the gills so we kept him. I heard some reports of guys getting them right out front of the pier and even a little north of the pier also. Our speed today ranged from 2.5 to 3. I know a couple of the hits came at 3 mph.

You'll mark more fish at 83 kHz. Also, they say the 200 kHz is good only down to around 200' and it has a much narrower cone than the 83 kHz. I've got a Fish Hawk on my boat and we don't have any issue with interference. But, my fish hawk and transducer are on different sides of the boat. I also don't have a CHIRP sonar. From the Fish Hawk website: If your transducers are side by side, that could be causing the issue. Good luck with your tweaks.

You need to get a transducer that matches your graph. Some are 50 kHz, others 200 kHz or like mine, an 83/200 kHz. My graph is a Lowrance Elite 5.

Another option is to take what you smoke, cut it into small pieces and mix it with cream cheese for a cracker dip.

Nice job being patient with that fish. I've made the mistake in the past of cranking on the drag too tight to stop a fish like that. Usually that resulted in a bent hook and lost fish. So good job on this brute. I've heard of a saltwater charter captain who as the line was getting spooled on some massive fish, look line from another pole on board, wrapped it around the pole that was getting spooled and threw the first pole overboard to fight it with the second. They never got the fish. They think the first pole got hung up on bottom somewhere as they didn't get that back either. Now that is an expensive set up to lose! But nice job having full reels and playing the fish smart. It sure is nice having these big fish in the lake. I hope it continues.

Pentwater, 7/30 and 7/31 My son and I went out for a quick trip Sunday morning. We had lines set by 6. We had to pull them at 8:30 because we had to get back to help my wife pack up and get checked out of the campground. Oh what a morning! It was dead flat calm. We watched schools of bait fish on the surface and big fins getting after them. We marked a lot of fish on the sonar which was a new for me. (long story short - if you ever have a sonor that marks fish on inland lakes but not Lake Michigan, get a new transducer. Mine would mark bait balls, bottom and cannonballs on Lake Michigan, but no arches. On inland lakes I marked fish all day long. That issue was fixed with a new transducer.) Anyway, we finished 5 for 8. All were kings and we threw one of the five back. Biggest was 22 pounds. We fished 80 to 110 fow. Notes are in the boat as far as lures and depth. The surface temp was cold - 55 degrees where we were fishing. Sunday PM was a different story. We went back to the same area and found surface temps to be 68 degrees. The fish were scattered. We managed a 4 for 6 night, with two steelhead, a coho and a 23# king. Very different from the AM trip. We had hits in 170 - 150 fow, but marked about 2% of the fish that we marked Sunday morning. Monday PM, 0 - 3. Had trouble finding the fish. Missed a steelhead in 170 fow down 45 on a rigger with a blue dolphin spoon. It hit the spoon and went vertical out of the water and we lost it on a big jump. Had a big rip on a dipsey diver down about 40 feet with a green spin doc and meat rig. This was a good fish and he got off when he ran into the 300 Cu. We worked 170 to 125 fow with not much to show for it. As we were pulling lines we got into 110 fow and saw a lot more fish on the sonar. I guess we should have tried in closer sooner. Sorry about the lack of specifics...the notes are in the boat. Hopefully we'll be back out there this weekend.

Earlier this year emailed the DNR about making the location of the nets available online and to complain that some I've seen are very poorly marked. Here was their response:

We plan to go out Aug 4 & 5. Let me know how you do.

Just noticed this post reads totally different on the app than on the website. The 'at mentions' mess up the app. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Great Lakes Fisherman Mobile App

Pentwater 7/21 AM, 8 for 9 Fished by my dad and two of my boys for a morning trip. Started setting lines around 7 and fished until noon. Things slowed up just after 10 am. We worked water between 95 and 170 feet deep on an East/West troll and took fish both directions. Ended up with 2 kings (15#, 12#), 2 coho and 4 steelhead. A white paddle and pickled sunshine fly down 70 took fish in 130 fow and 145 fow. A double orange crush on a 100 Cu took a steelhead on a 158 fow A blue haze paddle and meat on a 300 Cu took a stealhead in 158 fow (it was a double with the 100 Cu above). Had a big rip on a mixed veggie spoon on a rigger down 65 in 138 fow. That was the fish we lost. The hot bait for us was a standard size Natural Born Killer (NBK) spoon (regular size) on a 250 copper. It took 4 fish. (I can't recall all of the depths for this bait, but I know we did get 1 king in 98 fow.) Based on some of the other discussions on this forum, I did a few things different for this trip that I think helped us out. First, I put fluorocarbon leaders on everything except my diver rods. (Thanks @Boomer for starting that thread.) I started with 20 Berkeley Vanish, but after buying it found a lot of people the weren't happy with it. So I never even tried it. Instead, I upgraded to 20 pound Seaguar. I was breaking a lot of knots tying these leaders on and I just wasn't happy with it. I was wetting them really good like you have to with fluoro, and tying them slow to avoid the fluoro burn, but I got way too many breaks during my testing to feel confident about using this line. Once I did get a knot tied, it looked solid, but it made me nervous because of all the previous breaks. I thought this line could even more get expensive if I start losing fish and setups because of breaks. Plus, it was breaking when I lifted my 19# cannonballs, so I didn't have a lot of faith in it. I will probably add it to the end of my walleye poles. So I did more research. Seaguar seemed to get a lot of love from people. The vast majority of people were very happy with it. P-Line was popular too. I opted for 30 pound Gamma Clear Leader Material. It had a breaking strength of 41 pounds. Most fluorocarbons I looked at had an actual breaking strength (in test studies) that was 80% to 90% of what the line was actually rated for. Granted, most of these studies were done with lighter (10# and 15#) test line. It seemed to be less of an issue with higher pound lines. It's not fair to compare a 30# Gamma with a 20# Seaguar. Maybe I would have been happy with the 30# Seaguar. I ended up with the Gamma and I was very happy with the knot strength and breaking strength. I never broke a knot when testing. We didn't get into any huge fish today. The kings at 15 pounds and 12 pounds were our biggest fish. But, everything held together just fine. I read in some other forums where guys thought fluorocarbon was a waste of money. A lot of people said "salmon aren't leader shy". Sure, I'll buy that, at least some of the time. But I think we have a lot more fish following our lures that don't bite, rather than the ones that do. I've seen this on a lot of underwater videos where the salmon will trail the bait, but never hit it. I heard of a story about a charter captain who added cameras to his lines so people could see what was going on live under the water. What a great idea! He ended up taking them down because so many fish were trailing, investigating and not hitting. People kept asking, "why aren't they hitting?" and they were wondering if he was any good at his job. Those are the fish I was after. If fluorocarbon could help me close the deal with some of those less aggressive fish, great. But, it needs to do that with good knot integrity and without breaking after a hookup. Hopefully we'll see how the Gamma holds up with bigger fish, but I was very happy with how it performed today. The other thing I did different was add a color of lead core to the end of my coppers based on a recommendation by @The Greek . I used 27# TufLine MicroLead which claims to be "30% smaller and 3 times stronger". Man, trying to tie a knot with that was tricky. I finally found something worked well - consistently well - and I was happy with how the Pb performed. The 250 Cu that took 4 fish today actually had 2 colors of Pb after the copper (by accident), and then the fluorocarbon leader. There are a lot of knots in that setup, but I was confident everything would hold based on my trials and testing of the various knots. So we had good action this morning. Most of the morning we fished with only 6 lines in the water because we kept pulling fish in and I could get the other lines out. (It took the kids a while to get some of these fish in, especially on that 250 Cu.) I can't prove it with such a small sample size, but I think the Pb and fluorocarbon helped my cause today. I did put a couple of wire divers out and they didn't get touched all morning. And photos for @Martin1950:

It's nice to hear some good sized kings are starting to show up. Thanks for the report.

I don't lengthen mine. I can see why someone would though...just to isolate the trailer even more. Seems like a good idea, especially if you are making your own.

I run meat rigs behind spin doctors, 10" flashers and the larger 12" flashers. I always use the tinsel teasers with whatever length the manufacture assembled them in. I don't make my own. I will usually run the meat on my 200 coppers and below. Some of the meat heads are designed for full herring, not strips. I always fish with strips and I've made the mistake of buying some that are designed to hold a full herring head. I've used them with strips, but honestly I don't recall how well they have produced compared to the ones designed for strips. I've got a 10" spotted dick flasher that produces well on a wire diver for me. And a 12" blue haze flasher that I will run on a 200, 250 or 300 copper that works well. I'd like to get Kevin's Girlfriend in the water, but they always seem sold out of those when I look for them.

Cannon Big Boards $60 plus shipping for both. I've only used them a couple of times, but they worked great. There is nothing wrong with them. They will ship from zip code 49337.

I just ordered some pulleys to test with. https://www.ronstan.us/marine5/product.asp?prodno=RF103 https://alltackle.com/malin-single-outrigger-pulley/ The Malin one I picked up because it was tiny, had a metal sheave and a built in clip. For the other one, it's about 1.75" tall and it's designed to pull wire/cable. I talked to the folks at Ronstan because they offer a wide variety of pulleys for kites, outriggers, sailboats, etc. This was the one they recommended based on how I want to use it.

2.5 at the ball, give or take. I don't have a kicker motor, so I'm trolling with my big 250 hp outboard. I've got trolling bags, but I've only used those for walleye. Usually I try to keep it in the 2.3 to 2.9 range.