Grand Haven Offshore Challenge 2026 - Day 1
Late May means Grand Haven Offshore Challenge time. It also signals the tail end of the hot salmon bite in Grand Haven. Fish move north, water temps change, and things always get more difficult right about now. The tournament has a point system instead of just weight and maximizing your daily catch of 10 fish is really the key to doing well in the amateur division. A 10 fish catch both days really almost guarantees you a top 5 and a realistic shot at winning.
However, that is tricky because only 7 can be of one species category, salmon or trout. Of course you could always just get lucky and get 3 trout mixed in with your salmon but that is a challenge and the time of year just makes it tougher. We were banking hard on that luck factor or just catching any 7 salmon and moving onto experimental trouting. Practice gave us a lake trout hint but looking at the forecast we weren’t making an attempt at that on Saturday. We did have a new rig to fish off of though, an Angler Quest Tri Toon that is fully decked out for the Great Lakes. We were team “tooned up” this time.
The Game Plan for Saturday was simple. Get our 7 salmon in close and then work hard for 3 steelhead. It also meant we would take some gambles with our spread to be less productive for salmon but maybe get a steelhead earlier. The east wind was nuts and although it wasn’t rough it was hard to get stuff in the water at times. We got set for our first pass and our first bite was a 12 pounder (it actually held up for big king until the very end of the tournament). We got bit again on the way back through in the same area. I don’t remember if we landed a couple small ones or what but it was on that pass that the steelhead rod took a bite. Lots of jumping going on back there and it was a good steelhead for sure. We got the board off and just had 20 or 30 feet more to go and it just popped off. Devastating, as we really needed that fish but at least it was still really early. Our long lines were causing us to make longer passes and wider turns away from the fish. So we pulled anything that would hinder our ability to make quick turns. Sure we had less rods out but we also stayed on top of the fish much better. Divers were going good, riggers were taking some, and we had 1 board on each side out up high in the water column. We picked up another decent king around 8 pounds on a diver/spoon combo. Anything mixed veggies was going good and we were swapping pretty much all to that.
One of the high lines took another bite and dunked the board. I guess this could have been either a big king or a big steelhead. Either way it would have been a big deal for us especially if it was a steelhead. But we ended up losing that one too. Fish number 7 was another decent king and we had our salmon numbers early. We pulled some stuff and starting experimenting, just praying to get a steelhead in tight. There was no chance we were making a run out deep to hope for lakers. Eventually we had to pull a lot of salmon stuff because you have to quit fishing at 15 fish. We needed all our time to hopefully get those trout bites. With a half hour to go, it finally happened! Steelhead on a diver up shallow and it sure brought some excitement both during the catch and the celebration after. We knew we would at least have a chance going into day 2 and we were hoping weights would be down with the tough conditions.
As for what worked for us, it was an all spoon program other than one crankbait bite (that first steelhead we lost). Mixed veggies was the super star in several different spoons/brands. Bites came on 100 cu, 175 cu, divers, riggers, flat lines, and a special short copper.
At the weigh in we had big king, big steelhead 4.8 pounds, and were sitting in 5th place. Less than 10 points out of first. I did not expect either big fish to hold up but it was a good indication that the steelhead bite was garbage. We had no where to go but up and I felt like we had a good chance if we could get 10 fish of any size on day 2. Once again those dang trout were the concern.
Before I move on to day 2, I need to give a shout out to Stranglehold Lures and Franks Great Outdoors. They had a photo contest for some free spoons and June’s giant salmon from last season won. She’s pretty protective of these ones and wouldn’t let us use them until she was on the boat. But last season we did have good luck on a couple different Strangleholds. Spicy Tuna and a blue jeans style spoon were good ones. Looking forward to another kids trip to get these new ones in the water.
