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Got to fish the Coho Classic as a guest angler but Bob busted me on the surprise as i hoping to keep it a small secret until I could say surprise at the weigh in. Had a great trip on Pirate's boat. Weather was good water turned good to great and fishing went from bust to boom on the kings. We employed a strictly king fishing spread which kept bites to a small number but wow what a bite when it happened. We made a very good showing in the Classic to boot, finished 7th in the amateur division. It was the best king outing I have had on the lake to date. Thanks again Bill for the chance.
Anyway I took home 3 nice kings 2 in the 13 or 14 pound range and a near 19 and a half pound one along with a 5 or 6 pound laker. All the kings were hens and all had egg sacs and the big one had larger developed egg sacs I assume it is a 4 year old fish. I had talked with Lickety Split about the fish and we got on the subject of stomach contents and I told him I would let him know what I found during the butchering. I was somewhat shocked to find all 3 kings had no ales in their guts at all. One had a white gel in it the others were empty and were cigar shaped. Did anybody else have kings on a diet? Maybe body metabolism is in hyper drive right now or something. I really thought it odd. Here are a few pics.

Great job guys!

Awesome! Care to share your strategies for targeting Kings?

drjdrew wrote:

Awesome! Care to share your strategies for targeting Kings?

The plan was the captain’s, Angry Pirate, but basically it entailed keeping the baits in the bottom half of the water column. Trying to keep the baits away from the coho. We used mainly 100 to 150 coppers and riggers with extremely long leads, 80 to 100 feet back. Kept balls near the bottom also. 5 to 10 feet off of it. Our dipsey rods did very little but still accounted for a couple of fish. We ran mainly spoons, ones featuring green patterns were hot. The UV green gator was a great choice along with blue dolphin and green NBK in standard sizes mostly. One fish came on a UV meat rig and one on a cut plug on the divers. Long leads on the boards also to keep the lures away from the boat. Basically we tried our best not to catch a coho. I think only a couple were caught for the entire weekend.

Great work guys and interesting stuff on the stomach. I didn't look at the stomach contents of the kings we caught but I can rest assure they were not starving. They were all plump, big and mean. I would tend to think too that the ones with empty stomachs are more willing to bite. We also caught a 6"ish Alewive on a spoon Friday morning. You never know lol I think our biggest one came sunday 1230pm 21lbs. It was a brute.

Tmik34 wrote:

I didn't look at the stomach contents of the kings we caught but I can rest assure they were not starving.

I checked the 3 biggest we weighed in Tim and they had empty stomachs too. Those fish were really thick and I expected them to spill out alewifes!

If y'all have never been to the Classic you should. Amazing event we have going on there.

As for fishing, we had a great Hartman, terrible classic day 1, and fantastic day 2. Kings everywhere!

Thanks!

Congratulations on a great day! The kings we caught on Sunday all had 5-6" ales in their stomachs.

To add to what Don said to my game plan. Deep rigger 5 feet off the bottom to have a chance for the complacent king down low. Next rigger approx 12 to 15 feet off the bottom. I was running my divers at approx 45 feet deep and 40 feet deep. I never really got them working well. Then I stacked 2-150 1-125 and 2-100 coppers. All coopers were hot. Riggers were hot. Colors green gator, green alewife, nbk, and green dolphin were best for me. The other spoon I left out on my high rigger all weekend only took 3 fish but all three fish it took were large scale worthy fish. The spoon was kc-1. I ran mostly all stingray size spoon I had mags out but they did not do as well. We fished from 55 to 65 fow between portage and Michigan city. We were closer to portage. I did best outside the mud line the ditch was throwing out and moving east. I know there was very good fish in the mud but my king fishing mud presentation needs a lot of work and I could not get them going in the mud. There was a lot of bait in the mud also. Day one of the classic on Saturday I really struggled to catch fish and any fish of size. I was on a pod of fish but Friday night to Saturday morning they moved out and I never really found them. I weighed about 42 pounds for 5 fish on Saturday which put me in 20th place. Sunday I weighed 84lbs for 5 fish which took us all the way to 7th place.