By: Capt. Matt Whitney
Whitney Charters
(616) 846-6325
www.whitneycharters.com
While most of us are still preparing for the upcoming spring, some anglers in the area have beat us to the punch and are catching a few coho, lake trout, and steelhead here in Grand Haven. Back in 2012 or 2013, we had similar conditions, and the fishing was fantastic from the first week of April and stayed strong right through May. The following are a few things that helped put a bunch of nice kings in the cooler during our last early spring.
Don’t overlook things like batteries, fuel filters, water pumps, life jackets, boat registration, a current fishing license, etc. as nothing after this matters much if those things aren’t up to snuff. A great place to start is to replace the line on your downrigger rods and the leaders and backing on your copper and lead core set ups. If you spooled up with new line last fall, strip a good 20′ off anyway as that section of the line gets beat up pretty good. At the very least cut and retie all of the knots. Do the same thing with your downrigger cables! Releases and weights work best when they remain attached to the downrigger, and if you were bouncing bottom for trout last fall or just plain bouncing around in the heavy seas, it’s easy to wind up with kinked and weakened downrigger wires. I usually take about 10′ off at the start of the season.
Now that your boat and gear are ready it’s time to head out and look for pockets of warm water around river mouths. Tenths of a degree matter so mark warm spots on your plotter so you can find those temps again. Scatter your baits from top to bottom as the temperature is not usually much different between the top and bottom. I like to have plenty of brightly colored spoon and a couple of Bombers or Rapala’s on flat lines early in the year. Mixed veggies, Blue Veggies, and Carmel Dolphins were all good in the top 25′ for me last spring. If things are slow and the weather is good head west. Last spring, we found a great number of active, big kings out in 200 feet of water within 20′ of the bottom. 10″ white paddles with Illusion, Mirage and Oceana flies were hot! While the kings were deep, cohos, steelhead, and lake trout were in the top 40′ out there and added a little extra action when the kings would take a short break away from the buffet table. See you out there soon!