Example July Scenario

[GLF]

You will be fishing the East side of Lake Michigan in late July out of Muskegon. The wind has been blowing hard for 3 days out of the North West. It will be overcast. The waves will be 1-3'. You will be targeting kings.

Where would you start, and why? What kind of program would you run?

[GLF]

You can reply to this scenario also.

[1mainiac]

A 3 day wind like that is going to move a lot of warmer surface water into the Muskegon Grand Haven area. I would start out front in the 40 to 50 ft range early and troll north and watch my water temps odds are there will be some pockets of cold water near the bottom with lots of bait fish above them which will make the early bite very aggressive. Depending on how the fish act and if I find any trapped sections of cold water will determine my second move but most likely will head west some where around Duck lake Looking for colder water. If I find something round the 60 to 80 ft range I might fish it for a bit but most likely will pull lines and run NW to the ledge and troll south and run a couple of 5 color setups out from the boat and break out the wire divers with flasher flies and probably the copper rods sticking with greens and darker colors. With a few variables that is a 6 hour pattern by the time I am back out front at Muskegon in roughly 200ft giving me a choice of pulling lines and running in or turning east and trolling in if I have the couple hours it will take to troll in.

[HitMan]

I would be fishing in the Muskegon Basin and/or Channel. The water should be rolled over and the surface temperatures should be in the 40s. The warmest water will be in the Basin, where the bait and Chinooks will gather, due to the 40 degree temperatures in the lake. Both species will relocate to the warmest water possible. I also would venture out to the 40 foot depths, or wherever the murky water is at in the Big Lake, but I would never be out of any murky water.

I would be using 1-3 color lead cores, divers back 20-35 feet, and downriggers 10-25 ft down. I would be running an 11 inch Pro-Troll HotChip in the White/Double Pearl Fishscale with an Oceana Rapture Fly or Frosted Fern Rapture Fly. I would be running up to 6 Pearl/Black Dot Tomic Plugs in numerous sizes, Silver Horde Ace High Double Glow plugs, along with Green Glow Size 3 J-Plugs. No spoons would be in the water.

If there are no fish in there, I would run out straight west until the surface temperatures started reaching the mid 50s.

[Nailer]

With out reading the other post, this is what I would do: Turn Northwest off the pear, and head to 50 fow. If I could only run 6 poles I would put 1/2 core/inline planer with a spoon to the inside, next High Diver/flasher/fly (green)back 75' next, Inside rigger would have a spoon set down to 35', outside rigger would be spoon set to 45', second high diver would be flasher/fly (blue) back 100' then outside full core/inline planer with a Jplug or spoon.

I would run a zig zag pattern into the waves. Whatever went first, I would make adjustments to the others.

If I could run more poles, I would run two more riggers and vary the depths.

We typically run just a king setup.

I should note though, this is assuming I didn't have a probe.

Now that I do have the probe, I would look for that cold water and fish it.

[DIRTY DOG]

i would run the same spread as hit man but stay out of the basin and channel area

"i HATE COMBAT FISHING" i would slowly move out to the 40 to 50 ft area and start looking and as he said NO SPOON all plugs and flash fly setups

cores in the 3 to 7 range 2 riggers down 15 and 30 and as the sun comes up move them down to 25 and 35 stretched back 60 and 80

all cores and riggers would have silver hoards ,j-plugs or lymen plugs

also 2 braid divers with flashers and flys back 40 to 60 on 3

and if i could not find anything in there go west and replace the 3 coler with a 10 and pay attentoin to to graph and water temps