Grand Haven Fishing Report 5-2-26

Here we go, the first real trolling adventure of the year on the Diver Dock pontoon! We headed out of Grand Haven early because we had to pull lines about 10:15. The plan was targeting the mud out to 70 feet or so. To no ones surprise it was rougher than expected out there but managable. We had a 4 man crew so we could run enough lines to really target the water column. It’s never a good sign to get the spread set with no bites. But after a little while the telltale vibration of a “shaker” king was on one of the downrigger rods. At least the skunk was out of the boat courtesy of a gold rasta goose super slim. With little action happening other than a couple other downrigger bites with no one home, I started checking lines. Many of the high lines had leaves and detritus on them from the river plume. So if you are heading out, be aware of that and the possibility a shaker could be on your long lines. We were fishing more on the deeper end of the spectrum but starting to work shallower. After what seemed like forever, we finally got a real bite. 200 copper with a Captain Gary’s SS. This fish went nuts, it was on the surface immediately and stayed there most of the fight. Apparently this king was identifying as a steelhead today (everything we caught was a king today).

Another little bit of a lull followed and then chaos erupted. A rigger went with an RV flounder pounder, then 7 color went with a standard flounder pounder, then a braid diver went with a standard glow frog/white back. Of course the very first king went under a wire diver, under a downrigger cable, and caused all sorts of fun issues. That delayed the landing of king number 2 which came off on the back of the boat while king number 3 on the diver just played nice at the back of the boat until the chaos had calmed down. It was unfortunately late in our trip at this point but we had finally figured something out in that 40-50 fow water range. We had time for one more pass and the glow frog on the diver picked up one more. Ending our day going 5 for 9.

There were some lessons learned today. All of our bites came on rods down in the water column. Divers and riggers were running close to bottom and the 7 color was the shallowest line that got bit (somewhere between 40-50 feet). We didn’t find the fish until later but once we did, reducing our spread to the productive rods near the bottom would have been the play. The short lines would have allowed us to make tight turns and stay on a school of fish better vs the have all your stuff out mentality. It is something we will keep in mind the rest of the season for sure.

We are also still getting used to fishing on the new Angler Quest so with every trip we are going to get more efficient. Hopefully we will get some calm weather to get back out there because it is time!