lake michigan Fishing Report 2023

It was good sign of fish but little tougher to get a bite yesterday. We definitely made the best of it landing 27 bluefin tuna. Let’s hope they get back to biting tonight !

July 26
    And we're off on another 5 day trip.  Things didn't go so hot at the bait receivers.  The bait we got was healthy, we just weren't allowed to take a full load.  We were shorted 75 scoops or so.  Anyways, we looked for fishies this afternoon.  We saw some small spots of yellowfin right out of the gates that wouldn't bite, and then didn't see anything until almost dark.  A sonar ball of yellowfin produced three fish so we got jackpot handled already. 1st, 2nd and 3rd.  We're going to slide down a little tonight and look in an area that produced some pretty darn good yellowfin fishing today.  The weather is magnificent.
                            

~~Sep. 12
 Slow morning, strong afternoon was how the fishing went down today.  We had 2 fish by lunch time and I was feeling the pressure.  Thankfully at noon the sonar went boom boom and we went sideways for a few hours.  Let me try and give you a picture of how things looked out here.  The fishing was wide open on a mixed school of skipjack and yellowfin.  We had 23 passengers and basically 23 rent rods.  Chaos out here on the Polaris Supreme.  And by chaos I mean fun, fun, fun.  At any given time we had half the passengers with fish on while the other half were tying on hooks.  It was pretty funny looking at 12 people at a time in the center of the boat tying on hooks.  Usually our customers have 10+ rods with hooks on them ready to go but all our anglers had one.

 Here is how I describe stand up tuna fishing.  It's not like freshwater angling.  Freshwater angling is more like an art.  It can be very peaceful and relaxing.  You use light tackle and  finesse.  With stand up tuna fishing, we can hook 24 fish at one time with every fish swimming a different direction with every crew member screaming out directions.  Gaffs are flying, reels are screaming and lines are snapping and it's some of the funnest $%^& in the world.  That's what today made me want to write.  We had a good time.

 We're on our way in already and we leave again tomorrow for 8 days.  See you then.
         

Sep. 7

Normal turn around today. Nothing crazy happened. It was hot hot hot. The bluefin were bigger then we thought. The small one went 139.something and the biggest one went 146. Pigs. Or cows rather. We'd like to do the same this trip. We left on the annual Robin Gledhill Blue White private charter with captain Tommy Rothery at the helm. After getting bait and some lunch it was nap time for most. Me included. It was nice With a shower and a cup of coffee right after makes me feel like a million bucks. We did the seminar and had a lovely prime rib dinner. I skipped it and cooked up some of the escolar passenger John caught last trip and was too scared to keep. They're not the prettiest fish and after hearing rumors of what happens when you eat too much of it in one sitting he said no way was he keeping it. So i tried it tonight. I had it for dinner. Tommy won't let me say what happens on here so I'll just say that it's a very oily fish and you should be able to figure it out. I'll let you know tomorrow John. The weather out here is smooth and we should experience some more in the near future.

Drew