FBD

Youth tournament in the 22’ on a day we should have stayed in close instead of riding the waves out to 200’. Then a fun trip in December fishing the trough in waves we could not see out between in the 14’. Turning around and having to buck those for a few wave sets until we got back into the trough was amusing.

Look up the laws for your local jurisdiction and go from there. Also just knowing how to drive a boat in inclement weather is something you should research. When I bought my 22’ we took it out in Lake Michigan in April in nasty 4-6’ chop. Brought my friend who ran a similar boat. The boat owner was absolutely mortified we cleared the channel my buddy dropped in the trough dialed in the trim and it rip then started slicing over waves like nothing. I carry on my 14’: A bilge pump. Hand held VHF. EPIRB. Air horn. Flare kit. Fire extinguisher. Throwable PDF on a 100’ rope. Danforth anchor with 200’ more rope. Recall your rode for anchoring should be 7:1 so 300’ is rope is still not enough in some circumstances. Danforth as it’s mostly sand bottom where I fish. A sea anchor to keep the bow into the wind of everything goes to hell. A tool kit with spare spark plugs and other common engine parts. I’ve had a buddy sink a boat without a life jacket on (Dave Mull, Google it) and hug a cooler for four hours until rescued. I’ve done grid searches to look for people, responded to maydays, and recovered corpses on two occasions. Not much fun tying a dead guy to your swim platform.

Do you have all the required safety gear? And do you know how to use it? I fish a 14' Deep V with a 15 horse on Lake Michigan all the time but I also have about 7000 hours on the lake. We took a newbie out this year along with my middle daughter and it was a bit sporty the newbie wasn't too thrilled then he looked at my daughter who was just on her phone paying no mind. I told him he had no need to be worried until I got worried, but if I got worried, he should be terrified...

We used to drop in at 70-80 cut an angle west-ish depending on waves and currents and troll out until we found them…

This is what I get…

Was out Sunday in the exact same water. Hit on a blue dolphin fixed slider down 25 never caught up to it. Hit on a mixed veggie nailer out 60 on a slide diver, missed that. Neither seemed to be big or very motivated fish. Tap tap stuff. 5# brown out in 45’ weird on a magnum Stinger mongoose out 75’. Had enough of getting beat up went to the beach barely got set up and hit the jackpot with a fat brown off a mixed veggie nk28 50’ back and 25’ out on a diver. CO checked us he was cool. Glad he didn’t ask me to dig anything out as we were bucking straight into them at the time.

Correct. It's a bad picture but one first year ~ 3# and a second year fish at 6.6#. Funny part was the coho all came on small natural colored spoons while I had silver orange back jr t-sticks, yellow rapalas, and the usual Thin Fish out as well. Hoping for some beautiful kings like the OP had soon...

Sure wasn’t as much east in that wind as predicted. Had to run up to college to grab my middle daughter so we didn’t get out until 6:30 but hammered into them then surfed back. Ended up 6/6 fishing a brown program all fish came on spoons. Sticks and thin fish were ignored. Caught the last coho in 4’ of water pretty much in the dark.

Weather hasn’t been very helpful for getting out.

Also remember this is a rare harbor where the water flows into the channel from the lake and not out of the channel. Hence any ice around the channel might get sucked into the channel instead of washed out.

Just use what you have and scare the people at the dock…

No hurry here finally got ice and decent weather…

Thompsons were great boats, right until they were not…

Lost my depth finder on a trip with a stiff east wind a while back so I could not pull off a N-S troll. That was miserable. Ride them out until too rough hammer on until the deep rigger bounced. 300’ copper dug in on the on bound troll I turned pulled all the other lines so I could work that snag up off the bottom. Snag was the biggest king we landed that year and once we snugged it back up it made that known…

I run lets see an ancient fish finder I traded for bags of weed, an aquarium temperature gauge that cost $3, and a Garmin hand held GPS. Learning how to read your boat, the rods, and the weather is way more important than relying on tools that can fail you. One of the best trips we had I broke my transducer off the stern and never set the subtroll on the 22’. Learned later the break was down 90 that day funny we caught fish from full cores all the way to bouncing the bottom in 140’ or so

22’ Four Winns cuddy. Launching solo is not pleasant.

Lake flipped hard, wanted to try out front for steel but heavy seas ruled that out. Wanted to try the channel but people casting and weird waves ruled that out. Tried Mac instead, hit a small sheep setting lines. That was it. Gave up around 7 as it was cold. Marked several bait balls in Mac and most of the hooks we marked were tight to the bottom, which is different. There was a pile just in front of the channel opening in 29' would have been interesting to jig that spot and see if it was a late last push of kings, not that I would expect them to wait once they got into Mac.

Smoke plume that only got bigger. Coming home they were still spraying down a smoldering car in 196 by the Ottagon overpass.