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My crew, being a buddy whose never fished Lake Michigan and my oldest son, equally inexperienced and turns 23 today, were able to put 7 coho in the box out of the 9 hook ups we got. It was a good enough haul at 11.33 pounds to put us in 12th place. Slightly better than average. I’ll take it for my first tournament ever. Coincidentally, I’d take it if it was my 100th tournament.

We headed east toward Indiana Dunes and set up in 52 FOW after seeing some marks on the way over. It was definitely a slow start, but we started getting hits. My son lost our first two fish just due to excitement and being over-anxious pulling the rod out of the holder. Can’t explain it but it was funny to see. I calmed him down and he never lost another fish. Anyway, we took fish on basically everything I put out. Thin Fins, J-11s, J-11s on mini dipsy, Yakima Mag Lip on 2-color lead and even a Mountain Dew Spin Doctor with a Big Weenie “Slap Ya Mama” fly on a no. 1 dipsy. The Mag Lip on 2-color got the most hits. I never really dialed in a consistent program worth changing the spread much.

I’m not a tournament guy. Never have been. Probably never will be. But I’ll fish in this tournament again.

Good job on a tough day man. The fish were definitely very scattered.

Nice, and great pics.
Curious, did you guys encounter the fog over there yesterday morning? Man, at Mich City, it was tough to see the boards for awhile, pretty scary stuff

The fog lightened up greatly at tournament start, then rolled back in for a while something nasty. It was bad!

The one picture on my post, the blank white picture, that’s about all the more we could see when the fog rolled in. I had to make a quick veer when we encountered another boat at 75 yards or so. Well, as quick as I could make with 8 lines in the water. But yeah, by the time I could make out the outline of another boat, we were awful close.