FBD

Saturday is looking a little heavy for the 14'...

Not sure when or if I will get the 215 out. Don't need another mouth to feed right now. Although it's costing me fish not using it now, which hurts. Easy to find a crew to look for Coho. No on seems to want to fill a cooler with Lakers.

Calm to one foot all weekend. Planned to take the 14' to 110' to find Coho (which were not there) dropped in at 60 and watched the ones build to ugly twos with some bigger. Nasty current. Best troll into them. Plowed out to 140' nothing going turned to ride them in and decided to drop a big white spinny purple mirage fly to the bottom. On a manual rigger. Wasn't down there five minutes it and the wire diver start pounding. 17.2# laker took the spinny got into the wire. We're cold, tired, soaked from the ride out and trying to baby this fish as it's scraping the wire, turns out it was tangled only in the fly. Netted it and just stared. Thought it was all of 20. 36 1/4" so I finally got a master angler. Stared too hard as we looked up and the other rigger is jacking, nice Coho on a double dutch mini streak 35 down. Reset both, saw the deep one pump a few times but at 130' down figured it was bottom and wasn't about to check it. Pulling lines it had a nice c w t 5# laker on it. All of the five pound lakers I've caught this year have been tagged. Four heads in the freezer waiting to get to the cleaning station. Quit at eight as I was headed out this morning. Trolled the beach all by our lonesome going 4/4 on natural baits, four different ones at that. Silver flutterdevle on a one color took a one pound brown, shallow shad rap took a nice beat up fall back steel that ripped the rear wire through the side of the plug. Pair of football browns of about 5# each, I mean old school short thick broad fatties like we haven't seen in years, on a die hard nk 28 and a brown trout f11 rapala. Cannibalism? Put all these back as crew has freezer full. While all reports are good, I hope you were there with me getting soaked and waiting for the next board to pull back instead of reading some stat sheet.

We stopped putting the gear away and just listened when you opened it up. Sounded sweet.

My nephew was out in 110' and got and lost a coho in the first 15 minutes, then never had another hit. Did we all come in together and if so we're you in the boat with twin outboards?

Foggy. With that and some stain in the water I expected the browns to be on their game. Not so much. Popped a nice 5# on a mini streak off a one color, and lost a smaller one on a dream weaver little devil when I tripped the bird too soon and gave him some slack. Both fish announced their presence by not pulling the boards back but by launching out of the water, the first one way off to the side confusing us as to what rod he was really on.

Our best was a 8" trash can with a green fly 45' down over 65'. Our stuff on the bottom didn't do anything. One off a white dodger with a green spin and glow off a diver, and one on a magnum green dolphin off a 200' copper.

Jigging will work any time the fish are concentrated. Trolling works better when the fish are scattered. When the lake flipped at St. Joe one time and the steelhead came in I watched a guy land several casting a fly rod off the how of a very large Sea Ray.

Those are not walleye but WALLEYE!

Sorry to jump on your post but I can't figure out how to create my own. We fished deeper than I wanted to try to keep grass off the lures. Crew mentioned they needed a fish for Easter dinner. No pressure. About half an hour in see something big rocket out of the water, black edge flutterdevle found an 8.4# brown off a one color 30' from the boat. With the pressure off we got a 3# brown down the chutě, turned back to port had a lull then got a small king, small brown, and a whitefish. Shad raps and a live target copper smelt took the rest. Released the king and brown. But not the whitefish. That would be silly.

We were the 19th boat out of Port Sheldon this morning. Coasties were pulling people over in Pigeon Lake. Nice flat day water was 33 and clear. Managed one laker in 40' off a River Rocker. Way too much traffic in close to think about trying for browns.

In out sucks for fishing. Leaving your gear out all night and having them put it away the next morning. Or conversely leaving it out all night and picking it up the next morning. If it's there when you show up at 5am with your crew. Yep, drive 40 minutes to wait until 8am to be told "we did not have room to drop it last night". Mine came with a year of in out paid in full; I used that time to rebuild the trailer and was done with that by July.