1mainiac

Kjell

I have a Maxi Mate and like it but to be honest none of my go to spoons are in it and it is stored below decks and a pain to get at. It is packed full of spoons that I seldom run once in a while someone will be on the radio bragging of how well they are doing with a certain spoon and I will dig it out and try that spoon. I keep my 30 or so favorite spoons in small clear plastic box's easy to access and can see what is in them at a glance. I made my first Maxi box out of a small old suitcase with lexan dividers what I did was installed 2 grooved boards in the suitcase and cut 0.125" thick lexan dividers to slide into the slots or grooves in the boards and I put foam in the lid to hold themin place when closed. It worked well and held a lot of spoons in a small package but being a cheap suitcase it did not take water well and rotted years ago. But if I was going to do it again I would get a better case and do it in a min. With the cost of shipping being so high I would consider making one.

Hi guys when I suggested this to Mike my thought was it would help some of the new guys get a base idea as to how we think and fish differant ports and conditions. It can also help some of us old guys see a differant pattern we might not have tried. So think of some ports and conditions you have fished in succussful or not and see if others fish the conditions as you would. I don't expect anyone to give away their secrets here so you don't need to name your baits just give a rough outline of your pattern and where you think you would start and what sort of things you would look for to help you find the fish.

No huge differance in board tracking here I suppose they change things a bit but I have ran a full core w 2 4oz Dive Bombs and a flasher fly and it tracked fine I admit it ran lower in the water due to the extra weight but saw no issues with it running. But hey I run up to 1 lb balls on snap weight behind my boards so I am a little out there idea wise. I have also ran boards on wire line setups and have even ran small slide divers behind boards so when it comes to goofy ideas I am usually game to try them.

It is the first weekend in June you are in a tournament the weather has been nice and mild with varible winds all week. You have a small boat with 2 riggers and 2 diver rods and a 5 color and a 10 color on inline boards. You will be fishing out of Port Sheldon with a six hour time limit waves are 1 to 2 ft sky is partly cloudy. Current winds are out of the north and have been for the last 6 hours or so.

I have been fishing lake MI since I was out of diapers mostly for perch in the early 60's with my grandfather.Went Salmon fishing with my uncle in 69 and have loved it since kinda gave up in the mid 80's with the problems fished a few times in the 90's but was not the same. I got back into it in 2004 and it is fun again but long for the bighogs we used to catch has been hard to get thrilled about a 3 fish limit that weighs less then 1 did years ago. Having caught hundreds of 30 to 40 lb Kings it is tough to get the thrill back. I guess I will have to head up and spend time at my sons place for the big kings but every time the rod goes off and the drag screams I am ready, no better sound in the world.

Read that the GL2S will not be running this year sad to see yet another aspect of our sport slowing down.

http://www.gl2s.com/

These guys put a lot of effort into promoting our tournaments and produced some very nice video coverage of the sport. Hopefully things will improve and they can get things back going in the future.

You will like the Launch at Manistee it will handle your boat just fine and is right out near the lake no long rung to get out it has long been one of my favorite places to fish. easy in and easy out and great fishing also has the highest number of Salmon plants on west side of state so large numbers of returning fish every fall. If it did not cost so much for me to tow there I would fish it a lot more but I still fish it a couple times a year or more most years.

In all honesty I fished my butt off this last spring and only got skunked 1 time but only had a few trips before June that landed more than 1 fish. I will admit much of my early fishing was debugging a new used boat but still at cost of gas and missing out on all my inland lake fishing was sad. I spent every spare hour on the boat or setting it up this year I will be hitting the river till early May and then pounding the Gills thru June. My only plans for the big boat will be the handfull of tournies I plan on fishing. I am not being pessimistic I love the early fishing but gas is not cheap and I really missed out on my inland fishing. When I realize I did not even catch 50 panfish this last season and did not even go to my trout lake one time all season I have to make a few changes. So I am gonna go back to my old scheduale and pretty much stay off the big lake till early June or later.

Log book is a great idea my son got me one I will try and fill it out this year.

when my flashers and cannon balls come up with bite marks on them you kinda realize there are times Salmon will bite anything. Tad Pole mentioned the Budweiser lure I knew a guy years ago that had treble hooks on a beer can and he said he caught fish with it.

Looks cool mike will they work on a probe like my depth raider?

Nice Terry glad you guys had a good day

Well the sheeple have voted for change so here it comes No more freedom no more Guns no more jobs no more money. Just a couple hundred million happy idiots who are going to have a hard time surviving when they figure out anyone under 250k a year is now a peasant in the new kingdom and they are also working on ending term limits so BO can be the first king of Amerika.

Robert I don't know the area you are fishing so that makes it tough to give good advise and all of us here vary somewhat in our approach. This is why I suggested to Mike to put up the scenaro section which allows us to put in conditions and locations and get back ideas from others as to how they would fish them. As my uncle told me 40 years ago a aggressive Salmon will bite a old tennis shoe with hooks in it and nothing will make some of them bite. This is still somewhat true we run big bright loud baits to pick off the aggressive fish and they pretty much all work then we run small quiet easy snacks in stealth mode to try and get the others to bite with mixed success. What works well one day may not another and even from hour to hour as conditions change. A setup you can't keep in the water at 6 am might not get touched after 6:30 for the rest of the day. I really don't think any of us know for sure what is going to happen when we leave the dock we have ideas and plans those who have the best success adapt faster and have more options. This why most of our boats look like porqpines with a zillion rods sticking out every where so we can make changes fast and try and find what makes them bite today. Where else can you see a 1000 dollar boat with 5 to 10 g in fishing equipment I have as much invested in fishing gear as I do in my boat and will still end up buying more. I would suggest you consider going out on a couple of charters and see what they do ask questions you will find most charters have very solid game plans and run based on them the advantage they have first is fishing every day they stay on top of where the fish are so they often drive right to the fish. You said in other posts that you have 4 rods already and 2 down riggers I gather you fish like I do with your wife a lot so I would set 2 of your rods up with mono for the riggers and 2 of them up with Braid for divers then I would look into a couple inline boards and 2 rods setup with core a 5 color and a 10 color. This will give you a nice spread and max you out for 2 people and is often my starting point for me and my wife. Then lok at getting some Dive Bombs to adjust the depth of the cores and with a little practice you will be able to cover the top 100 ft of water with 6 lines. This is where 90% of the fish are caught now a few lure choices and you are ready to go. Stay simple to start with and buy several of each and stick to a few basic colors of spoons and flies and plugs. Try and run a nice mix of each till something starts working then add more of that but never run all of one thing or all you will see is when they stop hitting that there will be times when no matter what you run you will catch fish or vise versa. There will also be times when only one presentation works so be prepared to at least dbl up on what works.

Thanks Terry I want to put 2 more rod combos together not sure if I want to go more colors of core or just stick with dive bombs on my core to make it run deeper. I have been thinking of a couple of ideas one will depend on which way I go with my wire rods. I have a set of mismatched Eagle Claw roller rods that have worked for me but don't like em very much and have heard so many bad reports on them so I want to upgrade them. So many toys so little money.

anyone want to take a side bet if any spoons in the set don't get picked by someone?

1 9 28 would be decent on a 5 color or less

18 and 24 mid depth on full core or riggers

20 and 25 on a SWR on overcast days

I would do like I do keep em all then you won't have room for new spoons and can save money for beer and gas. Every year I clean out my spoons as they are over flowing every where and every year I replace all the ones I took out with a few more I really think I could catch fish the rest of my life with what I got. Sadly what you have there is a collection that probably set you back between 120 and 160 and will bring 20 buck or less on Ebay most of them will catch fish if you use em.

For the last week it has been warm and sunny with light and variable winds mostly west and south west winds. Skies are clear and today there is a offshore breeze with calm to 1ft conditions. You are fishing between Ludington and Holland with a 2 man crew in a smaller boat with no depth probe. Surface temps are in the upper 60's.

Terry what are you running for reels and backer on 15 color setups? I have considered going up to some longer cores but even with Power Pro backer can't get much past 12 colors on my reels I saw a dbl core setup once it looked like the winch on my boat trailer LOL I could probably get 15 colors on my CV55L reels but those have my copper on them I am hoping to add 2 more setups this year Maybe if I go with cheaper rods I can spend more on the reels. My 10 color setup on Magna 45 reels and I am going to run braid for backer this year as there is not much room for mono under a full core on them.

A 3 day wind like that is going to move a lot of warmer surface water into the Muskegon Grand Haven area. I would start out front in the 40 to 50 ft range early and troll north and watch my water temps odds are there will be some pockets of cold water near the bottom with lots of bait fish above them which will make the early bite very aggressive. Depending on how the fish act and if I find any trapped sections of cold water will determine my second move but most likely will head west some where around Duck lake Looking for colder water. If I find something round the 60 to 80 ft range I might fish it for a bit but most likely will pull lines and run NW to the ledge and troll south and run a couple of 5 color setups out from the boat and break out the wire divers with flasher flies and probably the copper rods sticking with greens and darker colors. With a few variables that is a 6 hour pattern by the time I am back out front at Muskegon in roughly 200ft giving me a choice of pulling lines and running in or turning east and trolling in if I have the couple hours it will take to troll in.

Hey John my wife is about 110 lbs soaking wet her sister is about the same size the two of them tag teamed a 12 lb king on core up at Manistee this spring neither one of them would touch a lead core rod the rest of the weekend. It was the bigest fish of the weekend and the girls caught it but the rest of the weekend they payed attention as to which rod was going off. It was mid July when she grabbed one of my full copper setups with a fish on it she was ready to hand over the rod and drive the boat in a few min. I don't mind the heavy gear but have never argued when someone else wants to land one on core. I am sure pretty much all of us have been slow to grab a core rod with others in the boat a time or two. There is no dening that a good core program will catch a lot of fish and we all love it but I for one admit it is easier to love sitting here on the computer wishing I was fishing than it is reeling it in. I am always amazed at how many times no one seems to notice the inside boards going off unless they are stripping line like mad. Everyone on the boat always wants to catch the biggest fish so when the inside board is pounding hard people race to get it but when you see the board slide back and the rod change to a steady pull meaning a smaller fish on the full core or copper there is seldom a rush to grab it. And whether you love core or hate it you really gotta have it cause it will put fish in the box when nothing else will and if I am burning gas fishing I want to catch fish.

Frank last year I spent over 20 grand fishing with the new boat and gear I can remember dreaming of a time when I would even make that much in a year of working. Never in my dreams did I ever see me spending that much on fishing and the sad part the next set of planned upgrades to the boat are just under 10 grand but unless i hit the lottery won't happen this year.

Yep lead core can kick even the biggest butts trying to drag in a big fish. 2years ago I was out with a friend on his boat and we were having a decent day but it was slowing down when he say "hey put out the lead core I have had the rod for 2 years and never caught a fish on it" so I grabbed it and picked a nice lure for it a MONSHINE BLOODY NOSE well he does not have a board for it so I tossed it out the chute and as I am letting it out I ask him how many colors and he don't know. So I just send it out without counting cause I was already out several colors when I asked and we are in 80 FOW. As I stuck it in the rod holder I told him he was fishing and I was driving a few min later the core pole goes off and he his having a blast for about 20 min then he starts asking how far did I let it out and my response was all the way to the fish keep reeling. He was huffing and puffing when I netted the fish and as I got ready to put it back out the rigger went off so I grabbed it and brought in a nice 8 lb king and reset the core and the rigger and went back to driving. At least now I knew it was a full core and just my luck the core went off again his fish and all the time he is fighting it he is complaining and just tell him keep reeling it in. The next time we went out he forgot his core rod LOL. I have seen a lot of guys and girls complain about core my wife won't even grab one of my core setups she just points at the bounceing rod and says your fish dear. Me I don't care if my arms are burning from fighting a fish that is a good thing but full core and copper setups are heavy big reels big rods and heavy line and bringing in a 20 lb king on on is a good cardio workout. The only way my wife will ever fight a big fish on copper is with the harness and belt on it is just too much weight for her.

I see a lot of guys have already chimed in and I agree with everything said so far it is a tool in the box for you to use. here is my rod setup that I keep on the boat at all times, 6 rigger rods all mono 2 w 20lb 2 w 25lb and 2 w 30lb 2 30lb wire rods 2 30lb braid rods 1 3 color core 1 2 color core 2 5 color core 2 10 color core and 2 300 ft 45lb copper setups. I also on ocasion bring my 10ft Steelhead rods with 8lb as they are a blast to catch fish on. On the days when I have enough people on board to run 12 or more rods my boat looks like a angery porcupine and we cover a lot of water width and depth wise. Running that much gear pretty much means drive straight or prepare to detangle. However it also means any fish near me gets a chance to bite on something and often I am surprised at what gets hit. No matter what most of us say often it is a oddball lure we tossed out for the fun of it that gets hit however we all still run our share of high percentage setups and getting the core out after sunup is one of them. The Lakes are much cleaner now than they have been in decades maybe ever this means that a lot of the tactics we used to employ to get their attention now scares them off. So a fish that avoids your rigger and diver setups may go after a spoon behind core several hundred feet behind the boat. I pretty much always have a couple of 5 color setups with bright spoons like the new Nitro Hell Fire or Circus or the old standard dbl orange crush. These setups pretty much always bag a few Steelhead and Coho nearly every trip. I send them way out on inline boards and pretty much let them run till they catch something. The next desision for me will depend on water temp and depth and that is to decide between copper and full core very seldom do I fish with enough people to do both so I kinda go with full core when running my braid divers and copper when running the wire divers. For me my Rigger progran and my Diver program are my meat and potatoes and I make nearly all my changes in these setups. Including adding a 2 or 3 color SWR to my riggers to add a stealth mode to the riggers.

Frank put me down for 50 of the 50lb and 50 of the 25 lb send me a pm with your address and I will send you a check.

I use a ton of them things every year might as well buy em in bulk.