Here is our tournament game plan for 2007.  Nothing is completely set in stone yet.

April we usually see a river salmon tournament, but last year the river was just about void of fish by the times got their boats out.  There were a few Coho caught early but by mid-April they were gone.  So we do not see a river tournament happening in 2007 for salmon.

The first event on the calendar is the Salmon Stakes.  It is usually the last Saturday in April.  There has been a rumor rolling around that it may change to the first weekend in May, so that contestants can catch Lake Trout.

There are supposed to be two new tournaments early May on Lake Huron.  The weekend of May 5th is supposed to be the Harbor Beach Can-Can tournament, and the Saturday before Mothers Day is going to be the MSSC tournament.  There were also some smaller events held last year by the local bait stores in Port Sanilac and Lexington last year.  If we have the time, we will try to get into one of these events.  One of our team members is getting married on the weekend of the 5th thought.

We will for sure be at the Blue Water Classic.  This will be around the weekend of May 19th; weekend after Mothers Day.  Hopefully Harbor Beach will be opened up!!!

We are going to have to pass on the Grand Haven Offshore.  We have commitments at home that weekend that we have to take care of.  This is a great tournament.  Last year it paid out ~118% back to the contestants.  It is highly recommended by us.

Next on the list is the Thumb Area Offshore Challenge.  We plan to attend it.  It was a fun event last year with lots of fish being caught.  Something like 60% of the field weighs a limit of 5 fish, so it makes for some tight standings.

Early July is usually where we take a summer break from the tournament scene.  We will most likely do the same in 2007.  We may enter into the $20,000+ Musky Tournament on Lake St. Clair around the weekend of the 16th of July.

At this point, we hope to make it to 3 of the later summer tournaments.  We want to get to the Ludington Offshore, Tightline Shootout, and GLPAA events.  It should be a tournament every other weekend, with a bit of travel too.

We plan to finish the year at Ludington fishing one of the BWSA events.

That's a bunch of events for a year.  Hopefully we can make these great events.

2006 started out very slowly for our salmon angling.  We made two trips on the St. Clair River in April and got no fish.

We finally got up to the big lake and lucked out in the Salmon Stakes taking the largest steelhead.  A whopping 3 pounder.  Not the largest of fish, but still worth $500.

For the Blue Water Classic, we got DQ'ed on day 1 for being tardy.  Day 2 we lucked out again.  We pulled a 11.66 pound Laker off of a wreck.  At the time we weighed it, it was the largest fish of the entire tournament.  However, there were still about 3 hours left before weigh-in closed.  Somehow it lasted as the top fish of the tournament.  The prize was $1,000 gift certificate from Big Jon.  Image can be found here.

Our next excursion was the Grand Haven Offshore.  Saturday, we boxed out a little bit early, slowly made our way back to port at 22mph, and cleared the pier head at 1:10pm.  Mike and Brian lifted the cooler to the scales and found no line at all, and there were only about 8 boats that had weighed ahead of us.  They weighed our 12 fish at 70 pounds.  We were the leaders of both the Am and Pro field of ~150 boats with 190+ points.  Sunday, we struggled all day.  Our friends on FISHWHORE had 8 bites right next to us, and finally after 65 minutes of fishing we popped our first fish.  With a half hour run time, and not having a bite the first 65 minutes after stop we had lost 95 minutes of fishing and it really ended up being the difference in the tournament.  We came to the scales on day 2 with only 11 fish, and the Am Boat REEL DEAL ended up beating us by 1.2 points.  We still walked away with a second place prize of $2500, a 333 prize, day one leader prize of $500, and the Saturday Side Bet.

Two weeks later, the Fishigan had another good showing in the TAOC.  The team of Dave Rymar, Mike Rymar, Adam Hienrich, and Phil Clark fished the 2 day event and took 2nd place.  This is the second tournament in a row that the Fishigan took 2nd place.  Congrats to Rob on Riptide as they took 1st place.  Fishigan had 106 pounds, and Riptide had 109 pounds.

Early and mid-July we made 2 muskie trips.  Here is Gordie Hanks (pictured right) lands this 48" Master Angler Muskie.  This was our longest we would take all year.

Fishigan participates in the Tightline Shootout in early August.  Though the team bombs out (16th Place out of 39 boats) in the one day event, lots of fish are caught during pre-fishing.  The best day is Thursday where the crew lands 7 fish over 20 pounds, including a 25, a 25, and a 27 pounder.

Pre-fishing Friday for the Tightline and we found this 29 pounder right off Toronto.

It was decided to leave the boat in Canada for the rest of August for some more fun fishing.  We fished the Bluffs on Lake Ontario.  Fishing was either ON or OFF.  One day we might only catch 2 fish, and then another day you take 8 over 20 pounds including this one over 31 pounds.

We brought the boat back to finish up fishing the St. Clair River and Lake St. Clair.  September, we did some Sturgeon fishing before the season ended.  The largest we would boat would go 55.5" by Sara.  Here is a summary of the catching, all fish were released.

We attempted to finish out the year muskie fishing.  We make 3 trips to the Canadian Shoreline and got 3 skunks.  Finally on Election Day, yes we voted too, we had an amazing numbers day on the water going 8 for 8.  Here is Larry with his 45" healthy Muskie.