Holland Shakedown Cruise

[Paulywood]

well, I ended up going out of Holland saturday morning for my shakedown cruise and it wasn't a very good day. Got out on the water and started setting lines around 5:30. Got the dipseys and riggers down and took the first hit on a dipsey with the spin doctor/ fly combo from the Dreamweaver. Problem #1, my girlfriend can't get the dipsey out of the rod holder. By the time I got over there the fish was gone. Started setting out my cores and we took another hit on the same rod. I grabbed it and handed it to my g/f, she felt it for a minute and it was gone. As she reeled it in I went back to setting out my core and the rigger right in front of her popped, no one home. That was the Mag Habanero from the Dreamweaver(those were 2/3 lures that didn;t take bites for us at the tourney). My g/f got the dipsey in and everything was gone off of it. I mean swivel, leader, spin doctor and fly. I don't know if I didn't lock the swivel right or what, but the white end on the snubber was gone too? Anyway, i pulled up the riggger that tripped to reset it. Got the cable all of the way up and was locking it into place when the cable snapped and i watched the ball float to the bottom of the lake. All of this happened by 7:00. By this time my crew wasn't feeling very well and were having a hard time keeping the boat on a straight heading. So we decided to troll east and called it a day when we got in to 75 ft. of water. Pulled line and were back to the dock by 8:00. The good news was that my g/f loved her first time on Lake Michigan. She had never been on a boat out on the lake before. The other good news is I got the boat out and everything worked pretty good. I am going to make a few adjustments and we should be good to go for our trip to Frankfort next week. I'm going to replace the cable on the rigger I snapped just to be safe. Thanks everyone for your help, couldn't have done it without all of the advice and recommendations i have received, not to mention the rides I've had on other people's boats that helped me work out my set-up.

[caznik]

Good luck fishing at Frankfort Paul and let me know how the fishing is before I get up there.

see ya soon,

Rich

[huntingfool43]

Nick

Glad to hear you finally got your boat out. Good luck up to Frankfort.