Home Forums Fishing Freshwater A King thing.

I fished solo yesterday off shore 17 miles cant count how many fish I landed north of 30 easily 15 were between 16 and 20lbs
Was fishing in a 3 week tournament and needed to weight in 7 fish I needed 2 more to complete my box. Just couldn't find any jumbo kings yesterday
I left the slip at 5:30 am and returned at 5:30pm a long day solo. I managed a 19.60 and 19.62 lb fish to close my box for a 7 fish total weight of 151.46lbs and a 21.64 lb average hopefully that gets me a 2nd place finish as 1st place leader is 159.62 he got a 25lb and a 27 lb fish I just couldn't find a big kicker fish my largest was 24.34 lbs
Small craft and 10' waves today and tomorrow, Sunday looks fishable but sloppy so I opted to weight in those 2 yesterday other than me and the leader no one has more than 5 fish weighed in

Looking good, Dan !

That's a hell of a 7 fish box.

I'm intrigued by the idea of a 3 week tournament. Around here they're never more than 3 days, and some are only a few hours with a 2 PM weight-in. Keep us posted on where you place.

Windy here, too. Wife and I are dinking around the Upper Peninsula for a sort of anniversary trip. The wind would have made it impossible to fish, so I'm not missing much there.

They do a lot of weed and grass cutting in the shipping channel around Sturgeon Bay and do a really crappy job of collecting their cuttings. Every once in a while, 5 miles out, there'll be a huge ball of the chopped weeds and grass and you scramble to get lines clear of it. Would be interesting to see if there's any dodgers and flies, spoons, plugs, whatever, caught up in them.

Dean, you write about fishing "The bank" and there has to be a ton of stuff broken off down there. Lots of guys set too deep and don't watch the graph and hang up on that reef. We usually fished out of Kewaunee in my buddy's charter boat, but our best ever fishing was trolling the warm water discharge from those two nuclear plants south of there in our little boats after work. That was years ago before they commercially netted the alewife forage base fish and those bait fish were there for the warmer water and the big salmon were there too.

I took 2nd place in the tournament
$265 in tackle and $2880 cash prizes

Heck yeah! Congratulations!

Congrats well done.mb

Nicely done, congrats!

Well done, Dan !!

Sorry, I called you David. Got some wires crossed in my graying head.

Just wait! Lol! It only gets better!

I'm not sure whether to post this on a King salmon thread, or the strange catches one, but since I was after kings, I guess I'll post it here.

My buddy and I were on my boat last evening in Little Traverse Bay, in front of Petoskey, trolling for kings. There was a LOT of competition. Boats trolling everywhere, including a few bigger charters, who typically ignore the rules of the water and push smaller boats off the prime areas. It is what it is, I guess.

Anyway, no kings, even though we marked +75 fish that were almost certainly salmon, but we didn't get skunked thanks to a pretty fair laker that took my fly. 30" and 10 lbs. The meat on these fish has improved dramatically in recent years with their change from eating mostly alewives to other forage like gobies and cisco. This one had nice, orange meat, so the tail section of each filled will go on the grill and the thicker meat will head to the smoker along with some salmon and steelhead I have set aside.

30" and 10 lbs.

Took my boss out over the weekend. He had just bought a few rod/reel setups for copper wire, so he was happy to get out and get them wet. We launched from Harbor Springs before dawn and had the area almost completely to ourselves with only 1 other boat around. Nice!

We had just got the 4th line out when one of his rods was hit. About 15-20 minutes later, I awkwardly got the net under a 19 pound female king. Trying to get a fish within net range when using long rods in a small boat is a PITA.😀

We hoped that boating a fish right off the bat was a sign of what was to come, but nope, it was a 1 fish morning.

That's great, keep after them. Isn't it about now when king fishing really starts picking up?

Yep, and for us, it's about the only time of year for us to catch salmon because they don't really come into the bay here until spawning time.

What kind of boat do you have? I bought a Crestliner 1850 Fish hawk with a tiller and want to go out some time, although I am more interested in fishing the Bay of Green Bay . I live in SE WIs. and it is only 33 miles to Lake Michigan , so it is not a big deal.

My boat is a 1991 Sea Nymph, 17' center console with a 1992 Mariner 90 2-smoke. I wish it was bigger, but it gets me out on the water. It's fairly deep, especially for an older boat. Gunnel to chine measures around 26-28" and it handles +2' waves just fine, but when they build much bigger, I'm going in.

What kind of boat do you have? I bought a Crestliner 1850 Fish hawk with a tiller and want to go out some time, although I am more interested in fishing the Bay of Green Bay . I live in SE WIs. and it is only 33 miles to Lake Michigan , so it is not a big deal.[/q


ihookem, not a "King Thing", but get out in Miwaukee Harbor in the spring for Browns. They catch some very impressive ones there in not very deep water.

Been doing okay in NE WI for Kings lately, but already talking about next year though! Lol! Ferry to Washington Island, leave the truck/trailer there and power up to Rock Island and camp/fish from there (no motorized vehicles on Rock Island).

bruinruin, what is your bosses copper set up? One of my favorite methods...

He just bought 8 Penn reels and 4 Okuma rods. So far he has spooled up 2 reels with 150' copper, 30# mono leaders and 65lb PP backing. Another 2 are spooled the same, but with 200' copper. It was a 150' rig that fooled the king Saturday morning.

Personally, I still just have the 2 dipsy setups I bought a month ago, but am working on getting a couple manual downriggers mounted on my boat. I'd prefer electrics, but I'm ea$ing into this very expensive hobby.

I second your suggestion on chasing Browns on the Wisconsin side of the lake. Never done it myself, but I hear that fishery is top notch, and have seen the results on video and in a 27 pounder caugjt by a builder I work with.