Anybody hitting Lake Michigan?

[Tom Linderholm]

Just curious as to any big lake reports coming in? Brother and I are looking to come to the southern portion of the lake for some early season action.

[FishdogCo]

I am new to this board, and everyone has been very helpfull providing me with information on my upcoming trip to the Kab area. I think the best thing I can do is give a little something back in return for my area.

I live in SW Michigan and fish the great lakes extensivly. I normaly spend 3-4 days a week on the water.

Here is my report out of St. Joseph from a week ago during a club tournament that we had.

I had the pleasure to fish today with 2Paws and Darrin. We had been discussing all week what our game plan was going to be and no one knew the Coho were in until the night before the blast. Once we found that the Coho were in, We changed up the game plan knowing that we could fill out on the Coho if need on them, but we were after Browns and need weight so we started off the day looking for kings. We blasted out to 80' of water, took a look and did not mark a fish. Hit the throttle again and set down at 100' marking fish and bait fish top to bottom with the better hooks coming towards the bottom. Last year at this time, we had found kings out at 130' belly to the bottom and did well. Our plan was to give this program 2 hours and then go in and search for browns. Looks like we over shot the kings. We learned later that good success was at 60' belly to the bottom.....Oh well. We put out meat, rotators and glows, caught one Ho' on a glow. Ran the thumper rod and never took a bump on any kings. Water was extremely cold at 36 degrees out at 138. Water was flat running out but actually had kicked up a bit by the time 8am rolled around and seas were running about 2 foot with a chop out of the east. With one Coho in the box and the clock ticking, we pulled the rods and made a bee line to the junk cars 2 miles south of the piers setting up in 30' of water setting out the brown/Coho program. The usual body baits, small spoons. It was plain stupid fishing, we were filled on Coho inside of an hour with only one brown in the catch. It did not matter what was placed in the water today, ANYONE could have filled on these Coho today.

We changed over to all spoons that had worked well 2 weeks prior, shoved everything to the bottom and put on the brakes and started to search out the browns. We got in as close as 8 foot of water and picked off 4 more browns with the largest coming in at about 7 lbs. We tossed back boat side 4 more Coho and had so many misses that we lost count. Ended the day with 9 Coho and 5 browns.

Fishing is hot right now out of St. Joe. Kings are just now staring to show up in the catches..

Mark

Team Fishdog

[Tom Linderholm]

FishDogco, thanks for the report!

Sounds like laker tactics were in order on those kings. We get out every year to western Lake Michigan and pick them up in the middle of the column, just trying to get some time established to do an early trip out that way this year.

Keep your reports coming, they are definetely an enjoyable read!

[FishdogCo]

There are a lot of lakers showing up in the catches right now. But, they all must go back as the season on them does not open until May 1st I believe. Your right on the belly to the bottom Kings, got to shove the tackle to the bottom and kick sand in their faces to get them to go.

When you plan your trip to come over, give me a shout and I will see that you get the most current report and conditions for what ever port you are looking at. Who knows, I may even join you for a day!!!

Mark

Team Fishdog