2023 Fishing Season Review

[Lickety-Split]

lets keep this going fellas this has been pretty good so far. Really would like to hear from others on how you sized up this past season.

[reel fun]

Although not a true gauge to a season, the few times I was able to get out in the spring, fishing was sporadic, and the coho were definitely small.
No nearshore skams this year.
The fall, I usually fish ludington alot in early to mid september. PM lake and the river mainly. The one thing that stood out there was the small size of the mature kings. Not all mind you, but caught plenty enough to make a generalized observation. Many mature female kings in the 10lb-12lb range. Healthy looking fish, and plenty of them, just small. 

[Trent]

Hello! As most of you know this was the first year I was able to get out and fish much.

We started our first trip of the year on April 20th 2023 and fished with a really nice guy on his boat and caught our limit of 20 fish by 1 pm. We had coho, 2 kings and a couple steelhead and had to put 3 back. We went 23 for 45 that day.

From the 20th of April until July 18th 2023 we fished 1 or 2 times a week and if fishing was really good we fished 3 days.

This year is the best year I've ever had in my 50 years of fishing lake Michigan. We typically run 9 rods or 12 if we had 4 people. Our 60ft and 240ft coppers and wire dipsys out produced the downriggers hands down.

We did very well with Coho and Steelhead with Kings mixed in. We only handed 3 lake trout for the year and that's because we were trolling 2.7 to 3.1/3.3mph.

We fished 10 to 35 fow then gradually moved out. By mid may we were fishing 90 to 130 fow with limit catches being the norm.

It was an excellent year for us!

Our goal for next year is try to reduce the number of fish we had on and got off. We lost just about as many as we caught and sometimes more than we caught.

One thing is for sure, when you have 40 plus fish on in 5 hours it made the time go by fast!

Our best lures were 00 fire red dodger with fly and the Dreamweaver SS mixed veggie spoon. We had other lures that caught fish but those 2 lures were our best.

[bob]

I got the boat in on March 28th this year and started catching limits of Coho. We got in on some King action and a few steelhead weather permitting in May. Never seen so many N/NE winds. Seems like we couldn't get 3 days in a row of southwind. The steelhead were non- existent  in July. First time in all my years fishing on the lake without catching a steelhead in July. Kings never showed up in any numbers so the boat came out the 3rd week of September and went to storage. Hopefully next year will be better. 

[Trent]

JULY was extremely slow for us as well but we didn't target lake trout.

We did fish a lot of 4, 5 and 6 footers this year.

We learned a lot this year and hoping what we learned will increase our catch ratios next year.

[Lickety-Split]

Thanks fellas, this is a good post for a end of season review If others would chime in it would be appreciated.

Looking back and I agree with many, I don't remember having to deal with so many days of northeast winds and warm water that was pushed to us.

Now that winter sets in we finally get the southwest winds we missed for summer.