Muskegon 7/20 DW Challenge 11 for 12

[GLF]

No banana's in the boat today!

I made a post earlier in the week for some rules clarification before the tourney. I asked about releasing fish at the side of the boat if they were not put in the box. The reply was that it was OK to release fish as long as they were not boxed. This determined how we would work our catch for the tourney. After we got our limit, we would release anything smaller than what we had in the cooler at the side of the boat.

We caught fish(decent size) to the South on Saturday. After talking with some people at my marina, we contemplated going North and searching for bigger fish. We did not prefish very far to the North so it was a crap shoot on which direction to head. Do you leave fish behind and head North, or do you fish the fish you are on? We looked at my GPS and decided on an area we would try if we went North. After talking it over with one of my crew for over an hour, we still were undecided on which direction to head.

We finally decided we would ask my oldest son(Hunter(7)) if we should go North or go South, and what ever direction he said....we would go with it. He chose North.

Not knowing where the nets to the North were, we decided we would shut down in 130FOW and fish between there and 150FOW until it got a little lighter. I have NEVER seen so many fish on my fish finder at one time. I am not sure how a bait could be pulled through them without snagging something. We trolled around for an hour before we ventured into shallower water. Once we hit 127FOW the wire diver on 1.5 with 250' of line out, with a spinner and fly went. This would go 3 more times before it went cold. From there, everything switched to riggers and we could not buy a bite on the wire divers with spinners and flies.

We had a nice box of fish after our first 6 fish. We caught 4 more kings that we released at the side of the boat because they were not bigger than what we had in the cooler. If we would have kept the first 3 of those kings, we would have been boxed out by 8:15am. It got slllooooowwww for us after that. Somewhere's around 10am I was making some changes to our spread and popped the center rigger to change baits around. There was a 7.5lb lake trout on it that never popped the release. I think we pulled this fish around for over 2 hours. This rigger had been set to within 5' of the bottom for a long time.

My crew and I were fortunate and had a GREAT day on the lake!

[Wittingen]

At least somebody caught some fish today. We fished Grand Haven and ended up with the big skunk. Fished from 80-200 with out a release. All the boats out there were really scattered.

[GLF]

Here is our 3rd place catch.

[Nailer]

Nice job on the 3 rd place finish team GLF.

[Treblemaker]

Way to go guys.

[DIRTY DOG]

great job mike

[CAC]

WTG Mike,

Thanks as always for your detailed report.

Clyde

[Priority1]

Congrats Mike and crew.

[fishsniffer]

sounds like you really hammered em on those dreamweaver lures:)

[GLF]

sounds like you really hammered em on those dreamweaver lures:)

This event is the ONLY time you will see anything but a Stinger spoon on my boat! I had an exercism performed on my fishing gear and boat after the event.

I need to say "Thanks" to Glen and Greg for joining me in this event on the Pirate ship GLF. No one had to walk the plank for loosing fish. We lost the one fish because it wrapped up in the wire on a wire diver.

Arrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!

[fishsniffer]

This event is the ONLY time you will see anything but a Stinger spoon on my boat! I had an exercism performed on my fishing gear and boat after the event.

I need to say "Thanks" to Glen and Greg for joining me in this event on the Pirate ship GLF. No one had to walk the plank for loosing fish. We lost the one fish because it wrapped up in the wire on a wire diver.

Arrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!

hopefully they were able to keep the fish behind the boat:)