South Haven 6/14

[Sea Eagle]

Played hooky from work on Friday and took a co-worker, his step dad and step brother fishing in South Haven. The day got off to an auspicious start when we pulled up to the gate at the boat launch only to find it "out of service" and the attendant missing in action. To make a long story short, thanks to the efforts of the good folks at Pyles Porthole and one of South Havens finest, the attendant was located and let us in shortly after 7:00.

The short and sweet of it is in spite of being "all in" (all 12 lines in the water) with a mix of DR, DD, lead core and copper, running a mix of mostly spoons with a few SD/fly combos tossed in, we were only able to scratch up one 10-12 king off of the DR/SWR with a UV blue dolphin spoon. Might have missed a couple more since we had a tripped DD and found out we were missing the spoon on the other DR when we pulled lines. The late start might have cost as a couple of fish, but we put a long 6 hours on the water fishing between 70 ft of water to 170 ft of water, North and South, with most of our time spent between 85 to 110 ft.

Here is the most disturbing aspect, in spite of spending six hours on the water we only marked a couple of small fish and one big fish. We only saw a couple of very small bait balls and only one decent bait ball. In more then ten years of fishing the big water, I have never seen the sonar screen so blank. Heck even on other days when we were not catching fish the sonar at least said there were fish to be had.

Where are the fish? Seems like we should have at least snagged something with all of that claptrap dragging behind the boat. Are all of the dire predictions about the health of the salmon fishery coming home to roost?

[Nailer]

Lets just hope for now, it's just the June Blues.

[SUPERTRAMP]

There is an old saying Tarrey, when the cotton wood is fllyin, the fishin is dyin. We are seeing smaller catches in St Joe too, but I am still marking lots of fish and really marking big bait balls outside 150FOW. I won't get out until Tuesday, but am looking forward to checking out the deepwater bite. "Should be some Steel out there.

[Stykbowhunter]

Wednesday night you had 70mph on shore winds at South Haven. I'd say the weather mixed it up a little. Takes a few days for the temps and fish to get back to normal.

G