King Time
One of my most looked forward to events of the year is when Salmon push into the harbors and make their run up the river. There has been fishable numbers of fish for almost a month now at my home port. I missed out on the early ones with bass tournaments but I wasn’t about to miss round 2. It was a great lesson in just how hour to hour the bite can be out there.
With ideal big lake conditions I loaded the boat up with 3 buddies and headed for the lake. High hopes is that they would be flooding in during the morning as the cold water certainly was. It is a gamble I will always take. This time it was the wrong gamble although we did mark a few and had one on for a second, it was largely a big disappointment. However on the day of a lake flip you can almost count on them coming at some point. I put it on the trailer and we all went to work. But it can be a team effort at times out there and I was thankful that I got the news from Shane a couple hours later that they showed up.
It was not a tough decision to head back to the lake. It was also the right one as once I got set up it took me 4 jigs to hook up with a big king. The next few hours were pretty incredible. I had a fish almost spool me for the first time. That fish went so fast and so far, I had to give chase and luckily it didn’t get caught on anyone’s boat. Another one dug on the bottom so hard that I just couldn’t move him. My arm legit hurt that night in bed. The unique thing about these fish is that they were so fresh and so much bait came in that they were actually eating.
MEGA Live really tells the story of what is going on down there. Often the best days have 2 different types of water going on down there. You could see 2 different types of water on it. You could see a line of water that the alewives wouldn’t go below (warm water) and below that line were all the salmon that wanted to bite. In my experience no matter what you are seeing on the graph that the bottom 8-10 feet is where it goes down at. Sure I’ve caught some salmon cruising up high where a lot of those individual marks are but I don’t believe that many of those are even kings. Even if they are they aren’t as cooperative as those pods that come in tight to the bottom. If you are new to the game I would encourage you to not get distracted by those high marks swimming around all over.
The next flip brought more fish and I got my dad in on the action this time. He is a pro at sitting down in the passenger seat, getting them to bite, and actually landing them from there. I decided to dabble in the skein game that day and found out it is legit. My gear and technique needs some work but I got plenty of action on it. I can promise I will have full set ups and some little girls fighting salmon on skein rods next year. It isn’t as exciting as the jig for sure but if they are on skein it is incredibly productive and will be great for kids. Speaking of the ladies Mabel caught her first salmon on a trolling trip recently and we all went on a jigging trip over Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately we never hooked up while the girls were in the boat but we did have a nice end of season trip to dockers. The bummer on the trip with my dad is I found a fuel in water sensor leaking fuel. It didn’t take long to diagnose it and shouldn’t take long to swap the sensor. I just hope no other damage occurred. I’ve got a new OEM part on the way and will probably buy a knock off part to keep in my boat for an emergency like this. Keep that in mind if this ever happens to you during a tournament and call or come find me.
It’s a bummer when this happens and it definitely cut our trip short. But I can tell you I’m thankful it happened on that day vs many others. The previous trip I had all the ladies in the boat and the trip before that I was rolling around White Lake with a 2nd place bag of fish in the livewell. It is never fun when adversity occurs with equipment but you just have to hope it comes at the best times and be thankful when it does. We’ll find out early next week if it is good to go or not.
Once again a 2 ounce P-Line glow green tiger has been our most productive spoon. Rainbow trout and sardine have also gotten bit. There are some new P-line colors coming out next year but I am going to try and get some special Great Lakes colors in the works.
One thing that has been unique about this year is the amount of “jack” salmon in. I have never seen so many small males and that is a problem because I like to boat flip them and break things. A “jack” is a male that matures early rather than the typical 3 or 4 year old fish that typically run. I’m not sure if it is because we have hatchery fish returning to the Muskegon this year or what but it is very interesting to me. Being a biologist it makes me wonder if there is more to the story.
We still have a lot of jigging left this season and while most of the previous trips were really predictable by weather. We are getting late enough where if you just go when you have the time it can be worth it. Some of those fish are just coming no matter what at this point and my best trip ever was one of those days. I will say avoid evenings if you can as they have historically been unproductive for me in Muskegon. Anytime between daylight and about 5 or 6 pm and be amazing though. Like I said earlier it changes from hour to hour!