Holland 10/23

[wild at heart]

last trip of the year for us. we left at 3 and got caught in a storm cell about 4. Lots of lightning and it rained as hard as I've ever seen it on a boat. Nice after it passed but we only managed 1 small laker. we fished 100 to 140 and we marked more bait than I have ever seen. Ball after ball from the bottom up about 40 feet. Lots of hooks too but just couldn't get them to go. I talked with Dan Keating a couple weeks ago and he saw the trawler out doing the alewife surveys and got him on the radio and they said they were getting lots of alewifes and counts were looking very good. I also heard that Holland and Saugy were only going to get around 22k in king plants each which is down about 50+ percent from last year. Less plants and lots of bait could mean some bigger fish years with less quanity for the next few years.

[wild at heart]

correction to above post. Holland is only getting 15k kings planted this year.

[Wasabi]

I read that Natural reproduction is taking off for salmon and that is part of the reasoning behind reduced stocking numbers. Hope it is accurate.

[wild at heart]

problem is that the natural reprodution your talking about is mostly up north of Muskegon to Manistee and we don't see those fish much.