Holland / Saugatuck 9/09 THRU 9/11

[DIRTY DOG]

Had a great weekend fishing with family and freind and even made a couple new ones. It all started Friday evening, I left the ramp in Saugatuck around 4:30 and fished with my dad and a old family friend Crhis. We set up in the chanel and trolled the 10 to 20 foot range till 8:00 and finished the evening going 15 for 23 with 4 big Coho and 11 Kings. This was my prefishing for saterday.

Saterday am I left the ramp with my prize tourny crew onboard and headed south for Saugatuck , we had the first line down at the crack of 7:05 and the first king in the box at 7:10 and continuned this till around 9:30 when they just plain started to shut down for use , at this point we were 9 for 15 with 4 coho and 5 kings. We messed around for the next hour or so with nothing to show so we decided to head back for Holland and see if we could pick one or two more up in the channle , becouse we thought the line pull was at 12:00. but ended up being 1:00. Well that seemed to be a bit of a bonus , becouse after we got back to Holland they seemed to be snapping and grabbing again, maid 4 passes up and down the chanel and ended 4 for 6 in about a hour and a half. That was good for first place and big fish in the wmfl,

Sunday ,NOT SO GOOD, after a 1 hour fog delay we headed for saugatuck with twill 23, side job and fishinmachine and started fishing around 7:45 and found that the water had warmed 21 degree, NOT GOOD we messed around till about 10:45 going 2 for 3 down there and made 2 passes thru the Holland chanle on the way back and cought 1 sheep head , lost a nice smallie and lost a nice king.

Also for what worked, we only ran a 6 rod spread do to boat traffic and for the ease of turning super sharp.

All plugs metalic superman on a 2 color/ glow ghost on a 2 colors /wonder bread on a diver out 23, ace hi in pearl with black dots on a diver out 23,/ torpedo colord ace hi on a rigger back 30 and down 7/ two face back 40 and down 5, these are the plugs that did most of the damage, and most were never changed all weekend.

Heres the only pic of the weekend

And thanks to all that fished on the DIRTY DOG II this weekend It was a awsome time!

[KJ pluggin]

Nice job guys.

[somethin' fishy]

nice job Terry & crew! congrats on your wmfl tourney win.

[2UNREEL]

Nice job terry and crew!

[Nailer]

Great stuff there Terry.

[tangled mess]

when you passed me the only thing i could see was the guy in the green shirt in the fog

[fishsniffer]

when you passed me the only thing i could see was the guy in the green shirt in the fog

i was your beacon of kindness when you were lost

[luremaker]

Great job guys

[Hooked Up]

WTG! Looks like a great time!!

[NO MO BEGGEN]

all i saw in the fog that day was nailers big white butt lol. as he was passing us in front of the suagy. peir

[Eliminator]

Great Job Dirty Dog and company!!

[BenLubbs]

Nice Job Terry and crew. You must have just got to the fish before me because that is the same stuff I was running but it wasn't working for me. I will say it was fun fishing next to all of the guys from the boards.

[Fishin_Freak]

Nice job on the fish everyone... especially Dirty Dog.

Myself and two friends almost decided to enter this tourney at the last moment. We normally fish South Haven and The Joe but from reports here and some first hand inside info we decided to head up to Saugy and try it Friday evening. Also got some info that the bait that was present was about the size of a #3 J-Plug... possibly #4. Don't really have too many #3 J's but do have a good handful of the smaller Lyman Plug which are all glow plugs. I believe these are #3 Lyman Plugs which are 3 inches long according to their site. Most of the Lyman Plugs are all older model as I do have a few colors you can not find on their site Lyman Lures right now. I do like the fact that you can order these from their site and they now give you an option if you want them in glow or not... and also give you an option if you want single... or treble hooks.

Ran a mix of the #4 J's and smaller Lyman Plugs and really could not get much on the bigger plugs... so switched everything over to the smaller Lyman plugs and was not disappointed. Basically ran only a 5 rod spread with 3 downriggers and 2 wire divers (with long 10' leads). Ran downriggers at 6, 8, and 10 foot down and didn't get too many hits... so shallowed them up to 2, 3, and 4 down and they started popping too. Ended Friday evening 7 for about 20 with one coho and the rest all nice fish 15 to 21 pounds. Interesting tidbit to this evening was that we broke off 3 of the Lyman plugs but were lucky enough to get all 3 of them back. (More later on lost/found tackle)

We almost did get in the tourney but my buddies decided against it. I told them we had a "program" and might do fairly decent. Oh well... coulda... shoulda as we probably would have given the Dirty Dog a run for his money as we ended up with 10 fish out of 2? hits with only one being relatively small. Definitely would have come in 2nd if not the top spot as all fish were 14-19 pounds. We ran the same "program" as described above... but we actually did do really good on a 10" Froggie Spinny and green crinkle fly off the wire diver (15 feet out). As someone mentioned the key to Saturday morning I believe was staying in tight to the piers. Running everything relatively short... 25-40 foot leads on the rigger and the wire divers only being 15 feet out (you could see them when you got to the cold.. very clear water on the south side of the river plume). We would cross as close as we dare in front of the pier being respectful of the guys on piers... go down a ways... make a tight turn and come back the other way. Most passes in front of the piers would produce at least one hit. And as most of you know... the fog did not help any. Me personally... there is no way I would have ran any type of lead core in that mess.

Now... back to the lost/found tackle.... we actually had 3 rods go off at almost the same time and it turned out to be that we snagged someones lead core and it it actually had about a 7 pound lake trout (returned) on a regular Stinger NBK spoon. The lead core was a 5 COLOR lead core!!! What in the sam hell is someone doing running 5 colors of lead in combat fishing in the fog no less????... mostly in less than 20 FOW too???? Someone was just asking for trouble. So the tackle count was us being up one good stinger spoon. We also snagged a dipsy diver that had a bright yellow 5 inch spinny on it with a fly. So we are now up a spoon... dispy... mini spinny... and fly!! And to top that off... we actually netted 2 more #4 J-Plugs and a Ace's High plug we spotted floating on the surface. And we didn't lose anything!!! Not too many days out on the water that the "Fish Gods" are giving back equipment to you!!!!

So there's my story... and I am sticking to it. Actually... some of you may know me as DonP on "that other site". My buddies and I have already said that we are going to make an effort to get up there and fish with you guys in these tourneys next year if the dates don't conflict with a few other tourneys that we enter. I know a couple of you through the other site... but have not really met any in person. Am definitely looking forward to it though. Until then... there is still some great fishing to be had before the boat gets winterized. Myself... I am waiting for the whitefish to start to show up which should be in a couple of weeks or so (depending on water temperatures).

[Priority1]

GJ Terry and crew.