Muskegon Pro/AM - Part 1

Here we are again mixing it up. Since I decided not to sign up for the Michigan Bass Nation tournament out of Grand Haven. I had the weekend open to sign up for the Muskegon Pro/AM. I did have some regret about not getting in the bass nation tournament. But I just find it hard to throw a 250 dollar entry plus 100 bucks in club dues for something so uncertain. The next tournament location is unknown and there is no payout (although I did find out later that guys who made the team made 900 bucks). I could just feel that my heart wasn’t in it to put that much work in for such uncertainty if I got lucky enough to do well. I doubt I was the only one who felt that way because there weren’t a whole lot of west side guys in it. I did have some good friends fishing it so I was going to be rooting them on. Brandon won, Trevor got 5th and qualified, and Luke qualified in 4th. Those guys are going to have some fun at the next one and I would love to see one of them make it to the Bassmaster’s Classic.

My focus was going to be on silver fish though. I haven’t fished much since the Grand Haven tournament but Traver had been out catching them. The lake was flipping and that could only help us since we don’t have a probe to really target the thermocline out there. The water was going to be cold in shallow and that was hopefully going to bring the fish in close. There were a lot of boats hitting close to the pier heads but we decided it would be in our best interest to try and find some fish a little further away. We took Friday morning to get a little practice in as soon as I set the 3 color in the rod holder and went to grab the next rod it went off. Anytime you get bit before the spread is in the water it is a good sign. It would turn out to be non stop the rest of the morning. We had 2 different doubles and one was on 20 pounders/dipsy divers. That kind of stuff is what you dream of when it comes to salmon trolling. We were doing things a little differently too because we were practicing. We were running all spoons and going fast just trying to cover water. We would slow down with a big fish on and then as soon as we sped back up another rod would go. We figured out a depth and a speed for this day anyway. Baits were all over the place, as once a color got bit a couple times I would swap it out for something new. It didn’t matter they wanted it all! We did eventually put a flasher fly on a 200 copper and took an officially weighed 25 pounder for the Ultimate Salmon Derby. Unfortunately 25 pounds wasn’t going to get Traver anywhere this year. We couldn’t even keep them off while pulling lines and I don’t think we hardly ever had our 6 rods in that day. I made it to work much earlier than anticipated with a few meals worth of salmon. The coolest catch of the day was a big brown that bit a mag spoon (blue jackal) on a 7 color while pulling lines.

Tournament day was going to bring similar conditions and still cold water in tight. We had a big box of the day before and I had really high hopes we could do it again. We got to our water and started setting lines when another boat set down directly in front of us on our same troll. Great start to tournament day, maybe the unwritten rules are different than bass fishing but it wasn’t a classy move. It wouldn’t have been hard for the dude to give us some space either way or at least go up way ahead of us. However with salmon guys I’m not even sure it is even intentional all the time or that they just have no clue what they are doing. We took note of the boat name and later found out that they got what they deserved for that move. I knew when we had multiple rods set and no bites that we were in trouble. I also had no clue about what to do to fix it. So we ran our program and got a few bites. We landed a fat coho (road toad moonshine spoon) on a diver first and then not long after lost another one. It was becoming apparent we needed to get 5 fish just to stay in it. I’ll spare you the details on all the things/depths/trolls we tried but at the end of the day we had 3 nice cohos and 2 small cohos. The last small coho (blue flounder moonshine spoon) we didn’t even know it was on but it was a welcome sight and probably the most excitement a coho that small has ever inspired. We did lose 2 nice fish throughout the day both which I would say were similar sized coho to our nice ones. But would have given us at least 10 more pounds. We did at least get our 5 fish and each fish is worth 10 points so without those you are really in trouble. We took some gambles to try and get on some kings and maybe we should have just tried to grind out 2 more solid cohos. It is hard to say though as if we would have gotten 2 big king bites we would have had a nice bag. One thing was obvious is that we were all in on Sunday for the 333 which is weigh your biggest 3 fish, however once you weigh one it is entered in and can’t be changed so there is some strategy to it.

There was nothing we could do except hope that things had changed back for the good as quickly as they changed for the bad.