First trip of year - port of St. Joe

[Phat Phish]

Well, I finally got out for my fist trip of the year. Incidentally it was my first trip ever out of St. Joe. The furthest I have ever ventured south previously was one trip of out South Haven about this time last year. Normally I take my boat out, but I am still working to get it in tip top shape, so I went out on the Bushwacker, or maybe its the Bush Wacker. Either way it was my buddy and I and he had only ever gone out of St. Joe one other time, which was the prior Saturday. We decided to enter the Steelheaders tournament since the entry fee was manageable and it was only one day, which goes over a lot better with the wives than burning up the entire weekend on a two-dayer (not that it will stop us from the two dayers;).

So we set up in 20-ish FOW about 1/2 a mile south of the pier heads and trolled around, eventually heading back north to and then past the pier heads. Nothing to show about 1.5 hours into this tournament, which ran from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. We continued north and curled back into 20 FOW on the north side of the pier heads. At this time there were only four other boats on the north side, which I always like to see (not a big fan of crowd fishing). First fish came on rigger with a flasher and peanut fly. Four more were picked up in the next hour heading straight north in 20 FOW - two from double orange crush spoons on two colors of lead on the board and two on thin fins on the boards. With a max of 10 fish for submission we were half way there at 9:30 with 5 coho. Then things went cold and we couldn't pick up a thing on our southward troll back toward the pier heads, so back on the northward troll.

We eventually marked a nice school and picked up three fish, one of which happened to be a 6+ pound brown trout on a gold/brown thin fin + two more 'hos. Monkeyed around and wound up getting fish nine (another small coho) a little after 1:00. With nine in box we decided to go deeper and try for a king. The last four fish all came from thin fins on the riggers, so we kept them on our "king troll". In about 40 feet one of the riggers hit hard. The light line set up (12 lb. test) didn't hold up against whatever hit the lure and both the lure and fish were lost.

Time was running out...................then the other rigger (silver thin fin 32 feet down) started thumping. Long story short, it was a 13.8 lb. king to close out our box. When all was said and done we won the tournament, the biggest (and only) brown and missed the biggest king, as a very nice 15+ pounder was submitted by another boat. All in all a very good experience for my first trip out of St. Joe. Everyone out there knows how beatiful the water/weather was. The fishing certainly wasn't easy, but we got our fish and made it into the pierheads with 30 minutest to spare!

Eli

[DIRTY DOG]

great report, and nice job on the tournement!

[Nailer]

Welcome aboard Eli. Nice report/story. Congratulations on the first place finish.

[GLF]

Nice job of catching and winning the tournament. Welcome to the site.

[JWheeler]

Nice work on the fish. Same story in NB. The only difference for us was no brown or king. However, there was a nice 13-14lb king at the launch next to us when we came in. Looking forward to getting out there with you! I think the Ho's will cool off in the Joe, and the kings will pickup. Real nice way to start your season.

Oh yeah, 1 question???? Did you get paid for our wager from Frankfort???????? I sure am thirsty

[spoonfed]

Too bad you missed out Jason, maybe next time!

[Priority1]

Welcome aboard Eli. GJ on the first trip of the year.

[glnmiller]

Nice job finding and catching the fish, congrats on winning the tournament.

[JWheeler]

Too bad you missed out Jason, maybe next time!

Oh Man:crazy:

[fishinmachine2]

Nice job!!Congrats on the tourny!!

Scott

[Phat Phish]

I look forward to seeing and/or meeting many of you as the season gets going!

Eli