JVanderVennen

Headed straight west out of Holland this morning, set up in 100 fow and started to mark fish right away. 125-150 fow was where we spent the morning and ended 1/1 nice little king. 135 fow SW troll on the downrigger down 83 with a green and pearl homemade spoon took the fish. Couldn’t get anything else to go, constant marks from 70-120 down in 130-150 fow.

Simply grouping baits in a targeted range where the fish were active. When I get a strike and mark fish at a certain depth I usually try to hone in on that deep with the most active lures for that day. Started the morning running the riggers with about a 20-25’ spread but slowly worked them together. We had other baits and lines spread through the water column too.

First trip of the year and first post in awhile, so why not, unfortunately no fish stories today but a bit of info for the guys headed out tonight. As I said no fish in our boat this morning but we did manage to find them on the sonar. Worked 180-200 fow from 6:30-10am, two rigger knock offs, no body home. Marked continuous fish between 40-60 ft down and 80-100 ft down. Riggers were set 77 and 79 down in 185 fow, dw double uv crush 8” paddle w/ white fly and 8” white/ green spin dc white mirage fly. We’ll try again another day, good luck!

September is a great month to catch coho on the Grand River below sixth street dam in downtown Grand Rapids. I've found that blue fox spinners and Rapala rip sticks work good along with hot n tots and thundersticks chartreuse or orange is a good color. The Manistee River below Tippy Dam is another GREAT spot to put some long hours into fishing. It maybe be one of the top rivers in the state. It normally provides good opportunities to catch salmon in the fall along with steelhead throughout the winter and in my opinion it offers one of the best spring steelhead runs in the state. The best way to learn to fish any river or inlet is probably trial and error. But local bait shops can offer good advise and if all else fails just sit and watch other anglers. Find out who is catching what and most importantly how they are catching them. Also find good local fishing reports to help you locate where the fish might be throughout the state so that your maximizing your fishing time. Hope this helps a little Sent from my SM-G930V using Great Lakes Fisherman Mobile App

Started fishing this morning just about straight west of Kirk Park in 85-105 fow. Ended the morning 1/3 with about a 5 lb king. Fished a 5 rod set up with 1 full core 2 riggers 47 and 59 down and 2 dipsys set on 1 with green uv spin doctors. All three hits came on riggers with 2 on moonshine flounder pounder and 1 on uv green dolphin. Best trolling direction seemed to be anywhere from North to east. Marked a few fish till about 9 am then they seemed to scattered, not as many big marks as last week for sure. Fun end to the weekend with myself and my dad.

Well we were one of those fishing the 80-100 range and didn't do much, 130 fow took a rip on 8 color core and lost it...oh well nice job on the fish though!