Submitted by Henry Nabors
Chris Thompson: Port Captain – See tournament report for results. Chris said “the summary will show approximately 40% to 60% coho, 30% king and 15%lakers. The cohos vs kings needed scrutinizing if we were concerned. I know a few fish I saw in the last week were questionable. When you pull them out of water is the best time to tell before cooler discoloring occurs. But you are bouncing like a cork in a glass of water and you basically want that fish in box and pole back in water. Checking vital signs was not on our agenda.
Dave Zawacki: MWS tbd Place – We started about 4 miles north in about 90′. We took it on a SW troll picked our first fish, 9# king, on a green alewife spoon down 50′. Most of our action came off sliders on our riggers. We also were using a green dolphin spoon on our slider. When we got to 160′ it really lit up for us – very steady action. Caught one nice Coho on 125′ of copper with small orange dodger and green and blue peanut fly; all the rest came on sliders. Ended up with 1 king & 9 Coho.
Bill Gagnon II: MWS tbd Place – (Bill fished on Raven with Captain Tim Eskra.) The weekend started off on a funny note. While launching the boat at the DNR launch, the boat was tied off to the dock. After pulling the truck and trailer up the ramp, I went back down to the dock to help Tim cast off; the dock was floating away from shore. We finally were able to retrieve both dock and boat so we could tie off to another dock and finish boat prep and cast off.
Sat morning tournament was delayed because of weather. After a short Capt. meeting it was decided that the tournament would proceed. We left the docks and hit the big lake. Our plan was to run in a N.W. direction to 100′ of water. After checking for fish on sonar we settled down to the task of setting lines. The hardest part was keeping Raven in a straight line in 3-4′ seas with wind gusting to 17 Knots. Our spread consisted mostly of spoons. 1-3 color lead core 1 – 5 color and 1 – 10 color 2 down riggers and 1 slide diver. At the 9:00 o’clock fish call we had nothing to report. We had trolled out to 140-150 fow with a sog of 2.5 – 3.0 mph. Spoon choices were heavy in Green Dolphin thanks to Dave Hutton’s report from Ludington. We also had free sliders deployed on down rigger rods.
Our first fish came in 160 fow down 40′ on starboard D.R. It was a nice 22″ Coho. We also boated 2 doubles on the same rod (1 fish on bottom spoon and 1 on slider). We fished the same set-up the rest of the day with 1 Laker on 3 colors which fought like most Kings do. Tim would get up to the leader and then this lake trout would change his mind about the boat ride we were offering and pull all 3 colors of lead core along with some backing out 2 times. This was the most entertaining fish we caught for the weekend on Raven. This fight lasted 25 minutes and caused a little confusion when we brought it onboard, we thought it was a king with all the valiant fight. We pulled lines around 12:30 due to impending thunderstorm and motored back into port.
Sat fish count 9 Coho and 1 lake trout. Sunday morning the, we headed back out towards marks from Saturday and we were able to entice 7 more fish aboard Raven. As this was Capt. Tim’s first tournament aboard his new to him 2007 Trophy pro 2352 Wa, We were able to christen the fish boxes with a few fish. Thanks to Chris and Jeff for a wonderful tournament.
Denny Cheshure: Kept one king. Did not get past 75′ because of the waves and possible upcoming thunderstorms. We did not fish Sunday because of the fog. We did collect 5 heads and 34 stomachs from the club for the DNR during Saturday tournament. I had help from Steve and Brian Hutton in the collection of the heads and stomachs.
Dave Hutton: It’s about the same report as Bill’s. We caught fish on Green Dolphins, Blue Dolphins, Moonshine Crab face, all the big kings,1 Laker and 2 Coho, came on wire divers (#2 setting/160′) with a Green spin doctor/white spots/moonshine blue fly. Downriggers 30′ to 50′, with free sliders. We caught fish on every rod we had out. 5 color, 6 color, 7 color, 150 copper, 200 copper, wire divers, downriggers. Not sure how many fish on each rod, too much to keep track. We had our hands full catching fish and hanging on for dear life in the seas we were in. I think we were 15 for 22 for the day.
