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I can't believe the scarcity of kings thus far. They are practically non existant on this end of the lake, and honestly, I follow other sites and other ports and it's not a whole lot better anywhere. Time to quit blaming water temps, harsh winters, and whatever other excuses we come up with, the good ole days are over fellas. I haven't been fishing for a month, can't justify spending hundreds of dollars to come up there and maybe catch a steelhead or a laker or a ho....that's maybe. Ok, sorry, I just had to rant a little, contemplating selling the boat while there's still a market for it, but I've done that before too, and the fish always win.

Your spot on Reel Fun, the hay days are over and wont return unless something is done to fight the quagga mussles. Zebra mussles were bad but they would at least stick to the shallow waters, but quaggas can occupy any depth and all depths of the lake which really has caused the distruction of the lake huron salmon fishery and is doing the same with ours. I do believe we are in a collpase of our king fishery but it isnt as pronounced as the lake huron because the dnrs have seen this coming so they have tried to maintain a diverse fishery with a king as a bonus. I watched a show the other night and said that the mussles can filter out lake h and lake m in less than 3 days. Insane! When the top skamina for the mania in michigan city is only 12 lbs that isnt a good sign. The lake is in trouble and has been for awhile, the carrying capacity is much lower with quaggas than before. I for one will fish for whatever is out there and when we catch a King itll be a bonus and a happy one at that. Reality is poor regulations of ocean going ships have killed the lakes.

I know you can't one for one swap out cohos to replace the missing kings, but if the DNRs save $500K for not having to rear so many kings, I'd like to see them spend the majority of savings stocking more cohos. Especially IL and IN and maybe convince MI to stock more in the Joe to boost our summer offshore fishery.

Yeah Tmik...I was stunned to see those winning weights in the skamania mania tourney. Some of the pictures I've been seeing of the skams leads me to believe they're not finding alot to eat either. Long skinny fish, look like dropbacks from last spring...and maybe they are.
BNature, I'm for anything to boost the offshore fishery. I'm not a lake trout guy, and that seems to be what's out there. I've seen pictures from some of the better charters up north (Ludington & Manistee), and these guys have all kinds of lakers hanging off their boards, which they normally don't. Lucky for you charter captains that your clients don't demand silver fish like I would...lol

I hope the fishing is not going away although that would figure after I just get hooked on Salmon fishing. hopefully it is just a bad year. Just makes me want to hold off on getting any more expensive equipment until we see how the lake shakes out.

The skinny steelhead definitely makes me wonder. When Huron crashed there were some of the skinniest steel I have ever seen. I'm not selling my boat yet, but definitely not upgrading to a larger boat until this shakes out. The nice thing about a trailer boat is Erie isn't too far away and I had a blast catching Bluegill last weekend on Pine.

Hey guys,

I was just on youtube looking at some videos and this one came up of salmon fishing may 2015 on Georgian Bay. Look at all of those natural spring kings....1 after another there. The dnr did say the majority of natural fish come from there.

Georgian Bay wild salmon were the major contributor to the crash in Lake Huron. I don't think there were ever any salmon stocked there by the MNR. I don't think any Canadian provinces even have salmon hatcheries. A private group in Thunder Bay (Lake Superior) built their own hatchery. Only one I know of. So it's just Michigan strays spawning in a few streams then some of their progeny straying into other streams and it snowballed after many generations. And there are a zillion "trout" streams flowing into Georgian Bay. Kind of reminds you of the USA's southern border.