Holland 5/29

[zgrinder on Fin Warrior]

Set out to fish at noon with my first mate and eventually pushed off at 5:00pm.  Sometimes things just don't go as planned.  First time out for us as well.  Set down in 130FOW neat Saugatuck and pushed out to 212 with only a couple of tip ups.  Marked very little and what we did was pasted on the bottom in >180FOW.  Tried running a SWR near the bottom with a UV Wonderbread spoon but no luck.  Came back in and found bait on the bottom in 138FOW but no marks and no action.  Pulled lines at 8:30pm so we got skunked.  Spent more time figuring out why the PSS shaft seal started leaking then stopped, reloading the new Smart Troll app to get it to run then actually fishing and losing gear on a mono DR rod that I knew I should have respooled in the off season.  But I believe everything is squared away and ready for the next run after I clean all the flys out of the boat.  All reports on the water were slow.

[littleboat]

That's what shakedown is all about. Hope you can make your fixes.

You didn't miss much on the fishing. It's been tough. Big ones must be further north. I put 27.2 miles on my boat and depths to 205fow yesterday, went 1/3 with a small 14" dink at 5am, in 55fow south of the harbor, which I threw back to growup off a std dancing anchovy. I had two flybys that didn't manage to stay on. I washed alot of lures of different sizes an colors. I went out of Port Sheldon even getting up at 4am.

I made stops about every 30feet depth change pulling my lines so I could cover more areas, in depth along the path to see if better marks would lead to a change and produce different results but it didn't. I had boards, riggers, WS, cu and leadcore at various lengths and depths no better results. I ran from south of Port Sheldon to highway 45 and back to port. It was very challenging to say the least.


Sent from my SM-A156U1 using Great Lakes Fisherman mobile app

[2MD]

fishing has been reportedly terrible - oldest son won the GH Pro Tourney on Fowl Hooked on Thursday so congrats to him and Captain Sam - these guys had to run 40 miles to get into quality fish though - PUG salutes you on your success!

nonetheless, left PUG and the gang scratching our heads on what to try on Friday night though - ended up getting a later start but setup way down in Saugatuck mud - picked up a fish or two there in that 38-46fow but we weren't breaking records so we slid out slowly as the night went on - deepest we fished was 106fow off sliders 

ended up 7 for 10

bloody nose spoons worked quite well (thanks FBD for the rec) and went on dipsey out 120 and also rigger 

5color went nice steelhead on what I think was fireball spoon (actually our biggest fish of night)

happy meal went on copp200

have to check with the boys but there was a 3color rip on some tangerine spoon and then all the rest of the bites were rigger and especially sliders so that made em in that 50-55 down where they were chowing

West and NW troll was all they would eat on for us

Sadly, no huge Chinook although I lost one that was probably 12pounds when the hook pulled coming into netting (again that was rigger slider)