FBD

Cooler 1 of 2. Cooler 2 of 2 in progress with a couple hogs in the mix. Silver red head size 5 J plugs, walleye bait of choice. 10# and didn't trip the rigger.

More fun in the harbor: My last daughter was born the first week of October. We scheduled her weekly doctor's appointments leading up to her birth at 10am and I'd fish before them. If the fish were in, I'd miss them. Third kid wife didn't mind. My oldest and I were late to my middle daughter's birthday party as just as we were pulling lines on an afternoon trip we hit a double. I was at the Outdoorsman in Jenison buying replacement tackle from the trip the night before and grabbing lunch when my second daughter decided to be born much faster than expected in Zeeland after zero progress all morning. Remember that big bump on Chicago Drive in that area? You could launch a Grand Cherokee a long ways off it back then. I crossed lines with a kid throwing a Cleo, and I cut his line and told him to wait. When we came back around I threw it to him, but it hit the rail and fell into the channel. So I dug one out of my box and threw it way over him, where he spent a while digging it out of the sand. I chopped a fillet off a salmon in the channel and traded it for a hamburger someone was grilling at the state park. Finished out a trip with Dave Mull having an Ace Hi hanging off his thumb, as we were on fish. I've netted a fish for another boat while riding back in, a walleye guy jigging that took off chasing a surprise king across Mac. I've had a guest threaten to shoot a king that hung up just out of netting range (he was legal to carry, but we agreed that while Alaskans shoot halibut we probably should not shoot kings, especially in traffic). Back when I had two weeks vacation I took a week off each year just to fish harbors. Had a 500# week in the three fish era, picking up strangers on the pier to stay out fishing. I threw so many carcasses in the field next to my house that run that the cats and vermin could not keep up and my neighbor got an unwelcome surprise walking to his stand on opening day of bow season. We laugh about it now and he cuts through my lawn. Only guy in Saugatuck in the dark, setting the first rod in the release when a king ripped it from my fingers and somehow broke the line. Being a freshly charged J plug I followed him until it slid up the line and popped to the surface. We caught two fish that day with a CO's john boat tied off to my Four Winns and the CO helping to crew as he didn't have much choice at that point. Tried to send a fish with him but he didn't have a cooler. I miss those days.

Labor Day 2011 my wife, buddy and I limited out with 12 kings, three coho, and a 10.4# walleye in the afternoon. A brutal cold north wind and 4-6' waves out front kept fishing and pleasure boat traffic to a minimum, and warm water and low current kept the fish piled up at Big Red. We did not want to quit, so we called my nephew to pick up our oldest daughter from the sitter, and another cooler, and caught 10 more kings after picking them up at the launch. If I can find it there is a picture of 15 fish in a cooler that won't close, sitting on the back seat of my friend's Oldsmobile. He drove around Mac to clean them at the cleaning station, but the DNR was there and he suddenly realized he had three limits and one license, so he took them home and brought them to the station five at a time. I caught more kings that afternoon than I have in the last three seasons combined.

This is the first year in a long time I remembered the rocks stick out more than the break wall. First year I haven't stuck a diver firmly in the rocks on my first pass. We launch by the Tiara docks in the no wake zone. My record, back in the three king limit era, was 47 minutes dock to dock. We set up at the green can and were 4/4 by Big Red that night, went 6/10 by the time we were done.

I was well outside of the channel, however, you are responsible for your wake. He could have waited 10 more seconds to open it up until he was last the couple boats working the piers. I'm sure this guy knew what kind of wake his boat threw and just didn't care. I got stopped for excessive wake going 4.3 mph in my 14' in the channel. While listening to the drivel from the sheriff we were rocked by the wakes of several 35-50' boats, but that was OK as they have to go that fast to maintain steerage per the sheriff.

Three hours at the piers in perfect conditions yesterday morning. Even mark some bait and / or perch. Not a bump, didn't see any one else hook up, never saw anybody on the pier hook up. Went into Mac to look for walleye but within five minutes every rod was covered in salad. Back home sleeping at 9 am. On a bright note, I just about hit a Sea Ray with no nav lights on at 5:45, and had some monster of a boat try to plane out right next to me throw such a wake that it tripped both my riggers and divers and sent my front seat crew member to the floor. He thought he was going to fall out of the boat. I thought we were rolling over. At least a 4' breaking sheer wave that I had to spin and gun the throttle to take bow first or we would have rolled.

I've got lots of people who like to eat salmon. Wild caught salmon is $20 a pound. Skinned and pin bones removed, I get about 35% yield on kings from cooler weight to fillet weight, so a 15# king is a $100 fish. A two man limit of heavies back in the day put more meat in the freezer than shooting a nice buck. I don't eat fish but I smoke and can a lot of it for gifts. I once laughed about losing a nice king in the prop wash, and my buddy said "I will bring some t bones out here and throw them over if we lose a king and see if you laugh".

Not sure how well bigger kings would survive released into warm water. Earlier in the year not so big of a deal when the lake is 50 top to bottom. We had a 15# last Saturday that just fought and fought and fought. When I finally netted it, I didn't have to smack it, as it never twitched. Warm water was 80' deep and we hooked him and fought him in that bath water. I know releasing salmon, big salmon, is more common in Lake Ontario but can't speculate as to why. Lots of dynamics going on with salmon right now. Will be interesting to sed how it pans out.

There's also a no Unum threshold to plant due to predators. If you're going to lose 5k before they disperse to the lake, better to lose 5k out if 50k and not a third of them. My nephew caught a master angler walleye in Mac last spring a week after the net pin was opened, and it was full of king smolts. Oddly, the browns we caught this spring in Lake Michigan were full of little browns...

The river into Holland is a glorified agricultural drain. I doubt there's any significant natural reproduction. Even the Joe, Kzoo, and Grand have tribs that support limited reproduction. I've seen steelhead and caught small rainbows 5 miles from my house in a stream that is not planted. Not sure if any of those guys run the gauntlet of pike and make it to the big lake. I firmly believe that other than staging mature fish, the fish we catch out if Holland year round are not Holland plants. My CWT returns have fish from all over LM and even some from Lake Huron with no pattern. I've caught mature fish in August from St. Joe, WI, and Rogers City in the same trip. Fish also stray a lot. We catch coho in Lake Mac and the nearest plant was the Grand. So don't be too worried about it.

Alewives are far from out of trouble. I'll take a few down years on kings over having them being gone forever. Harbor patrol may suck, and I'm fond of playing bumper boats, but the king fishing out of Holland has been solid this year, to the new normal. I caught more kings in May this year than I caught in 2015 and 2016 combined. I caught kings every time I looked for them this year. Other than April, I never specifically targetted trout this year.

Guess the pier jumped out in front of him. I'll leave it at that, as the peanut gallery made all kinds of justifications about Just Do It hitting the Muskegon pier, until it was learned he was running fast at 0.17% blood alcohol. Funny how fast they shut up after that fact leaked out.

For five years, all planted kings had the adipose fin clipped. This program is now wrapping up and moving to mass marking of steelhead. Since a rare king makes it more than 3 years in the lakes (don't believe all the bs about kings running at 4 years old, when lots of studies have shown that unless stressed most kings, like 95% depending on the river, run at 2-3 years old) at this point in time it's safe to say all kings in Lake Michigan that are stocked are fin clipped. What's so impossible to explain? Pinks were planted, once, by accident like 40 years ago and now can be found all over Superior and Huron and even in Michigan. The Pere Marquette has not been stocked in like, forever, and has a great run of kings. Coho naturally reproduce in many Lake Superior streams, and I catch rainbow smolts while brookie fishing in Allegan County. There's been natural reproduction of almost all the fish to some extent in the big lake for some time, with the lakers taking off as the alewive population crashed, due to a switched diet - the alewives had a chemical in them that hampered egg development. We even allow people to catch spawning fish and wade through their redds. With so many salmon and so much productive water they can spawn in, it's kind of amazing that with all we do not to protect the fish, we still see about 70% wild fish in the catch. But even one pair of kings successfully spawning can hatch 1000's of smolts.