muskegon 7/24

[rwm]

nothing early and nothing hot but 300 copper and 10 colors did the best.

a glow spoon with orange edge and black dots was good,couple hits on monkey puke,blue moonshine,flounder pounder.

Water was 65 at the pier heads but we went back out to 125 to 155 fow with lots of bait fish marked.

8 fish with no kings,nice steelheads and coho with one laker,lost alot fish.

Dipsys were very slow.

Question: should we have tried something different to catch kings,out of the last 20 fish caught only 3 or 4 have been kings

[NickEverse]

Steelhead usually hit faster moving baits. Whats your surface speed and/or down speed?

[rwm]

it was trickey today with the current alot of the time went by the cable hum and bubbles off the cable ,I dont have speed at the ball

[Just Hook'n]

GPS speed and direction will let others guys know on the lake (if they were on the lake at the same time) know what your lures were doing...I'm bettting you were going a touch fast if you were catching steelhead, however this is just the beginning of king numbers being lower...the next number of years may be challenging...it's certainly not going to be like it was last summer.

[Ravbowhunter]

We hit the pier heads at about 6:45 pm and the lake was a little bumpy, 2-3 footers with a stiff NW wind still blowing in. The surface water was 53 degrees and we marked a little bait so we dropped lines in the mud and pointed the boat NW into the waves. The water was 49 degrees 10 feet down and 46 degrees 20 feet down so we set all of our lines in the top 20 feet. As we got out deeper, I dropped some wire divers down further. Pushed out to 95 fow and the graph was dead so we headed back East toward the pier heads. By the time we made it back it tight (just before 9) the graph was going crazy with bait balls and fish stacked in the top 25 feet of the water column. Alewives were jumping out of the way of the boat! We only had one confirmed hit all night and that came in 60 fow on a rigger down 20. It was a 3-4# steelhead that spit the hook right after coming to the surface. Pulled lines right around 10pm.

I don't know if the fish had lockjaw from the high pressure/cold front, if they were too busy gorging on the abundance of ales, or what but they were definitely there, just not willing to bite. I ran spoons of all sizes, UV, moonshines, regulars, flies on paddles, flies on spin drs, and various plugs. Ran braid and wire dipseys, lead core, and riggers. Varied speed at the ball from 2.0-3.0--NOTHING! Talk about frustrating, it's one thing when you can't find the fish and an entirely different thing when you can't get bit! There were 3-4 boats doing the same thing as me and I didn't see any nets. Saw some boats out in the 100 fow range, maybe they found some willing fish out there. Hoping that I fare a little better this weekend.

[Hooked Up]

I was hoping to go out last night, but kept seeing the whitecaps on the GH web cam and chickened out...looked like it layed down a bit by 7 pm....maybe I didn't miss much?...if the fish stay tight to the pier heads, this weekend will be combat fishing!

[nomojo]

We went 15-17 last night...primarily from 55-65. All spoons in the top 20'. Don't have a probe or subtroll, but S.O.G. was 2.5-3.0. We took fish in all directions. We caught almost all kings...one brown and one laker.

[Ravbowhunter]

we had our one hook up in that water but I plowed back into the pier heads because of all the marks. I guess I should have stayed our there a bit.