Last Boat Trip of 2014

Tim's new best brown trout

Dad with a nice rainbow trout

Headed out to the Milwaukee Harbor for one last boat trip before it gets too cold for me to enjoy being on soft water.

Together we boated about 7 fish (I only caught one) and lost about a dozen more boat side .  Tim lost a real nice fish after a pretty substantial fight.

We were primarily using 4" White Gulp Minnows on 1/4 oz jigs while also dead sticking small spawn sacs over the side of the boat.

The bigger fish definitely prefer the Gulp.

Water temp was 35 degrees.  Air temp not much higher.

Cool view while fishing

I FINALLY CAUGHT SOMETHING DECENT ON LAKE MICHIGAN!

Did not handle the fish enough to weigh or
measure, but this is my personal best brown trout
(for now...)

We braved the cold to fish Lake Michigan today.  Tried a variety of techniques.  Trolling would have been by far the most successful technique, but I am bored by trolling,  so we went and started casting jigs and gulp.

We had a great time today, landing well over 15 fish.  For a little while we were getting hits every minute or so.

Besides the jigs and gulp, we also caught fish dead sticking spawn sacs over the side of the boat.

After no fewer than 8 trips down to Lake Michigan without catching a fish, I am pretty confident I am starting to learn what is necessary to be successful.  It turns out, you can't learn a body of water this immense in 8 trips.

I now realize that Tim's trout looks substantially larger than mine...Tim dropped the ball with photography today :(

Tim caught a lot of brownies today, and while this one
did not fight as much as it should have, it was a
beautiful fish.

You may ask yourself...what on earth is this picture...
It is Tim and Eric Haajata with what can only be
described as a big ass gizzard shad.