4/4/15 Surf Launch and Cohos

Saturday was an entertaining day. Looking at the wave and wind forecasts for Lake Michigan, I knew it wasn't going to be ideal conditions. Relatively big waves were predicted to be coming straight into the beach for most of the day but were also predicted to subside as the day went on. It was also forecasted to be windy with 15-25 mph winds from the South, SouthWest all day. Nick and I decided to get a later start to give the waves time to die down a bit. We arrived at the beach to discover that there were still 2-3 footers coming into the beach. The lake itself looked relatively calm so we decided to surf launch and have a go at trolling for Cohos. As you'll see in the video, I had a few of the bigger waves crash over the front. Enough so, that I had to pull the front two scuppers to drain the water. Other than that, I was very pleased to discover that the Predator MX handled good sized waves extremely well. Once on the lake, it was extremely tough conditions. The rollers were not so bad but the waves being generated by the almost entirely West wind were pretty challenging. At times, I was paddling as hard as I could straight into the wind and waves and was actually traveling backwards. Despite this, I still had a two chances at fish that hit my trolled crankbaits. Before long it was evident that the waves from the wind were beginning to build and it would probably be a good idea to get off the water. We turned around and quickly drifted with the wind back to the beach. On the return trip in I got a few brief surfs on the waves. It was really pretty fun and the MX handled it beautifully. As you'll see in the video, Nick had a bit of a challenge coming into the beach and flipped his Hobie PA14 in the surf. The good news is that he was totally fine and he really didn't break or lose much gear. After we got out, we decided to go to another beach and have a look to see if the conditions were any better. The next beach did look pretty decent so we decided to get out and give it a try for a few hours. It was still windy but pretty protected from the waves. I ended up catching two Cohos. The one in the video was a really nice fish at just under 19 inches. I ended the day going 2/4 on Cohos. All in all a fun but challenging day on the water.