jatc

Took Dad and BIL up on a 0 notice kamikaze run up late Sat night. After a 3 1/2 hour run from Chesaning in the middle of the night without any sleep we were greeted at the pierheads with a thunderstorm to the south at 4:30. We slid back into Betsie Lake and hoped for the best. At 5:00 we saw that the storm had slid past us and we ran out to 80' and got set up. Ended up being a really nice morning on the water and other than a few sprinkles we didn't have any more weather issues until we got chased off at noon with another t-storm. Due to a couple of electrical/setup issues we didn't have use of the graph or fish hawk so we just winged it watching the cables and bend of the wire rods. We didn't get a hit for the first three hours which is very unusual for me so after turning west and telling my BIL I was going to throw him overboard as a sacrifice to the fish gods, we finally picked up a good steelie on a 50' Cu w/orange crush spoon. This allowed my BIL to be spared for the time being and after a couple more hits we determined the kings were around 90' down over 250' with a heavy SW current. When all was said and done we ended up 5 for 11 and no one presentation/color stood out. The only consistant seemed to be 82 to 110 down over 250'. I think we took hits on just about every color we ran but never had more than one hit per spoon. Very strange morning fish wise but we still caught a few and had fun in the process.

I also almost gave up on cores. I first ran them about five years ago with no success. They always seemed to be more of a pain than they were worth. I always seemed to catch a few off of riggers and dipseys and would only put cores out when these were dead. Then I had my "AH HA!" moment four years ago. We had a steady pick going about 40'-60' down and for no particular reason I put a green ladderback J-plug down the chute on a full core. First fish popped it before I got the rod in the holder. I figured "fluke" but four fish within 20 minutes was enough to convince me that maybe there was something to this leadcore thingy. Fast forward a few years and watch me set my lines early morning now and you will see my 3-color and 50' copper go out on boards right after the riggers are set. I will often forego high dipseys early light because they just get in the way of my cores and short coppers. What really turned me on to these was how much more effective they were than my standard presentations when I had already found the fish. I think a lot of guys lose faith (like me) because they use cores as search presentations when riggers and dipseys fizzle. As has been beat into my head on numerous occasions, you have to be on the fish to catch them consistantly. You can spend a lot of hours covering marginal water with good presentations and end up thinking the presentation isn't working like it should. Short segments before/at first light progressing to longer segments as the morning wears on generally works for me. Doesn't seem to matter what is on the end of the line as long as it is in the "zone" at least for me anyway. What I consider "searching" is later in the day when the shallower bite seems to die and I move deeper looking for pockets of willing biters. Pull out the long coppers and full+ cores and most often they will outproduce my 80'-100' riggers and wire divers. I have had great success with standard dolphin colors and chilly wille's on these. Good luck! On a side note my logs show my average fish per trip has gone from 7 to 11 fish per morning since implementing long lines. Significant increase as far as I'm concerned.