Offshore Challenge 2016

NumenOn the Water

Date:  June 4, 5 and 6, 2016

Body of Water:  Lake Michigan, Grand Haven

Boat:  Dog Day

With: Dog Day Crew

Target:  Great Lakes Trout and Salmon

Time: About 6:30 AM to 2 PM each day

Conditions:  Various; but generally Spring transitioning into Summer.  From flat calm, building through each day to 5 footers; and perfectly clear through raining and fog.  Water conditions were generally high 50s on surface and gradually cooling to 43 degrees F.  No real thermocline, yet.

The Dog Day crew had not fished together since last September, and none of had yet targeted salmon on Lake Michigan this season.  These were not ideal factors for entering a tournament, but that did not dissuade us.  We had a favorable weather forecast and a day for practicing.  We thought the best opportunity for getting a number of bites would be in deeper water, offshore; especially with the dearth of Kings this season.

6 AM run from the Grand Haven piers on our single practice day; beautiful conditions to search out some fish!

Conditions were flat calm and the sky was high.  Our initial spread consisted of four boards with lead and copper of various lengths, a couple of wire dipseys and two down riggers.  We were covering the top down to 140 feet or so.  We had set up in about 160 feet of water and the shallower rigger, set 63 feet down with a white flasher/fly  got hit within the first half hour in about 180 feet of water.  The smallish salmon jumped off, but provided a starting point and buoyed our spirits.  And for the next couple of hours we enjoyed four more bites, landing two coho, a steely and a tiny king.  These all bit Super Slim spoons in "Mixed Veggie" or "Hot Pepper" colors.  They'd all hit between 180 and 200 feet of water, at faster, but not really hot trolling speeds; about 2.6 - 2.8 mph.  Short Coppers seemed best; the riggers and dipseys had gone silent.  We'd not caught a fish deeper than 200 feet of water.  The biggest fish might not have weighed five pounds, but I'd suffered much worse in days in other Grand Haven tournaments.    We had something of a starting point for the next day.

Doc M bags our first (coho) salmon of the day.

This Super Slim spoon took several hits during practice and earned a near-permanent place in our spread.

Doc M had fished with some other "Pro" boats during practice for the recent South Haven tournament, and he'd picked up some experience, pointers and gear for targeting deep lakers.  We ended our practice day with an attempt at dragging bottom for them in about 120 feet of water.  We made just about every possible mistake, didn't get bit and mostly fought tangles.  (Doc M had developed a taste for 50-foot leaders on the wire divers; until I see it make a positive difference, I'm not a fan.) But we did learn from this effort (set one rod at a time and communicate in the back the boat!), and it turned out to be time decently spent, because we fished much more cohesively during the tournament.   

This practice day had also been the Kids and Ladies Tournament, and post-fishing talk indicated that about 130 feet to 170 feet of water had produced the most bites.  Since we'd gotten our bites on the shallow side of our range during practice, this became our target for the tourney's start.  And Day 1 of the tournament started well!  125- and 150- Coppers produced a steelie and a 6-pound king from about 150 feet of water, but then things fizzled out.  We only got two more hits, both from the bottom, while targeting lakers.  We pulled our first laker by bouncing right off the bottom (rigger; yellow-spotted tin can dodger; Spin-n-Glo) and then finally caught  a dipsey fish by bouncing bottom; a spinnie/reversed fly/Spin-n-Glo combo trailed 50 feet behind.  Both of these lakers came from about 125 feet of water.

Our four fish weighed a total of just over 16 pounds; not a great catch, but not bad, either, as another two or three fish of any legal size would have put us in the top 3 "Amateur" boats.  What was truly evident from the weigh-in is that lakers would win it; there were virtually no kings weighed; and our lakers had to be abundant for us to make a move.

This steelie on Day 1 was bigger than anything we caught in practice.

Our first targeted laker.  They are beautiful fish!

Doc M is a gregarious guy, and he's gone "all in" with this fishing.  During the evening he developed some "intel" within the marina, from folks he trusted; and the advice was to target lakers in 130 to 170 feet of water. (But beware! The boat that had won the Kids and Ladies Tournament had crapped out on Day 1!)  We knew we weren't on winning fish, so, as we left the dock on Day 2 under looming clouds and rain, we changed gears and moved on to more new water, farther south.

There was a bit of SE wind this morning, and we struggled at first to find a trolling angle that the boat and trailing lines liked.  We pulled our first laker right off the bottom pretty quickly while pulling some tangled lines (about 120 feet of water; wire diver; spinnie; reversed fly over a Spin-n-Glo.)  This quick catch of the targeted species offered some promise.  During a slow turn to get back on the spot, the 125 Copper got ripped (orange and blue spoon in the darker conditions) and now we had a beautiful, bigger, 8-pound laker, too.  Once again, we were off to a good start!

Soon thereafter the 10-color lead core (now rigged with a copy-cat orange and blue spoon) got hammered, and our fish of the weekend (10.8-pound steelhead) came aboard; it was still only about 9:30 AM!  

But seas were building; boat control was a chore; and we lost touch with these fish.  In fact, we didn't get another bite all day.

Our Day 2 catch totaled about 21 pounds, and we broke the 100-point barrier for the event.  It wasn't good enough to win anything; but we'd done decently well.  We never got a sniff of the bigger lakers that were apparently so prevalent further south; faster and more motivated boats were running almost down to Saugatuck to get in on a more consistent trout bite.

Doc M might have phrased it best; we didn't win, but we were still only about 3 fish from cashing a check.  He was right; it was another tough Offshore Challenge.

What do I have to say about this?

Lake Michigan without King Salmon simply offers a diminished experience.  While we caught a couple, they were largely absent from our weekend and generally AWOL from the tournament as a whole.  While I saw piles of big lakers, more and bigger than I'd ever seen at a tournament, I saw only a few teenager kings to 17 pounds, and only a few smaller ones as well.

The biggest fishing lesson from the weekend is, Don't fish for others' fish!  By which I mean, we spent each day or a portion of each day reacting to the information of others; and the value of that is doubtful unless the info is complete.   That includes more than depths and baits; speeds and especially location are critical.  Moreover, these reactions had us trying to laker fish together as a new crew from a new boat with new gear and techniques; and tournament time is not the time to be doing such things.  Tournament fish to your strengths!

But good attitudes and a realistic emphasis on fun fishing kept the mood light.  We still learned a bunch and had fun; and even though we struggled, we also know that we were only three fish of any size from cashing a check.  Meanwhile, a winning strategy for the tournament would have entailed a huge gas bill; to implement such strategy would have said more about our egos, as opposed to our sensibilities.