White Lake

Lisa and I spent this past weekend in Whitehall Michigan at the Michillinda Lodge. Michillinda is located on Lake Michigan close to White Lake in the town of Whitehall.

One of the most noticeable features of the drive up to to Michillinda are the decorative light posts that lead up to the lodge.
Here is a shot of the Michillinda Lodge. In the picture the lodge looks grand, but on closer inspection it is really badly in need of a paint job.
Here are Lisa and I on the landing down at the beach. The lodge sits up on a bluff about 100 feet above the beach. The weather was pretty bad. It rained most of the weekend and we did not spent too much time outside.
The first night we stayed in another building next to the main lodge. Here is the view off our balcony.
Here is a great shot of a rainbow, I got in between rain storms.
Here are a few shots of the lodge's interior. The pictures make it look nicer than it really is. Most of the furniture is well worn and the carpet needs to be replaced.


The restaurant was very nice and all the windows overlooked Lake Michigan. Here is Lisa at out breakfast table the first morning.
We spent most of the weekend sight seeing and visiting places that I had been to as a boy over 20 years ago. Here are a few shots of the White Lake Lighthouse.

Here are a few shots of the view out of the top of the lighthouse. In this picture you can see the White Lake Channel. The end of the far break wall was my favorite boyhood smallmouth bass spot. Many smallmouth bass met their demise off the end of that breakwall.
Here is a shot of the the Lake Michigan side of the channel. Waves were breaking over the pier heads all weekend long.

The Pigeon Hill Family Resort and Old Channel Inn are still there and have not changed in 20 years. The cottages I stayed in as a boy were still there and had not changed a bit.
The folks The Old Channel Inn still cooked up a great cheese burger.

Here are some pictures of Armstrong's Bait and Tackle in Whitehall Michigan. Lisa called it Shitty's Bait Shop. She was so grossed out by the place that she had to shower when we returned to the Lodge. This shop was awesome. Bass Pro or Cabelas have nothing on this place. It is the way tackle shops should be. This shop was exactly the way I remembered it from 20 years ago.
There are thousands of fishing rods thrown around everywhere. I spotted at least 6 old mangy dogs laying around on the dirty floor. Most of the dogs were by the three wood burning stoves that heated the place.
If you wanted a specific rod it would take hours to find it, but I guarantee they had it. Everything was covered with a healthy layer of dust.
There were thousands of lures hanging from the ceiling and anywhere else you could hang a lure.
More Lures.
There was not enough room in this shop for everything they had in there, so they just threw the overstock on the floor. Every angler should stop in and buy something at Armstrong's. We need to keep small town shops like this in business for our kids to enjoy. I know I could have spent at least 2 full days in there.

Here are a few shots of nearby Duck Lake State Park. It rained most of the weekend, but we snuck out to Duck Lake to hike a bit. Duck Lake SP is just a few miles from the Michillinda.

Sweet Caroline

The big news this month is that Lisa and I are going to be having a baby girl. We have decided to name her Caroline. We should be meeting her around the first of February. Here is a picture of Caroline's most recent ultrasound. If you notice the small line above here body, I think that is a tiny fishing rod that will be growing along with her, so she can start fishing right away.....Just Kidding.



The other big news in the Northwest Indiana region is that we got nearly a foot of rain in a 24 hour period last week. The bad news was that it caused extensive flooding. Interstates were closed for nearly a week, basements were flooded, and schools were closed. The good news is that the high water brought in a tremendous run of Coho Salmon. The average Coho has been around 16 inches, but the numbers more than make up for the small size. An average angler can catch 40 Ho's in a day. A good angler can account for 100 in a full days fishing. One in ten Coho will be over 20 inches.


The Coho fishing has been great and the steelhead fishing has also been good. There are also a few King Salmon in the streams. There are so many Coho that I think it it hard for the other fish to get the bait. The Crew and I have been having a great week. I never thought I was going to land this magnum steelhead.


The Meppsman has been hitting the creeks hard this week Here he is with a fine King.


The Badger has been playing hooky from work the fishing has been so good. Here he is hard at work with a fine King.



Here is John with a fine steelie.


Skein Jesus has been has been spotted on the creeks again. He has been putting up big numbers with his float rod.


Bruce emailed me this pic of his Godzilla Steelhead. He caught the great fish somewhere in Wisconsin, but would not give me the exact location.

Back in the Saddle

Many of my friends in Northwest Indiana do not know much about my past in aviation. I started flying when I was a Junior in high school and have been hooked on aviation ever since. I have accumulated over 6000 flying hours in everything from gliders to corporate jets since high school. I am a commercial pilot with the ratings of airplane single engine land & sea, airplane multi engine land instrument airplane. I am also a flight instructor with the ratings of airplane single and multi engine instrument. I am a gold seal flight instructor. The gold seal means I have an 80 percent or better success ratio with my students passing their FAA check rides the first time. I began flying professionally after my graduation from Lewis University in 1997. I began flight instructing and then moved up to flying corporate and charter jets. I have flown many rich and famous people, but the most memorable was flying Colin Powell during one of his speaking tours in the year 2000.That is me on the left. I had a little more hair back then.

Most of my commercial flying time is in the Cessna Citation Jet. Flying the Citation was fun and it took me all over North America, but what I really wanted to do was become an Alaskan bush pilot. The closest I ever came to becoming a bush pilot was flying the Citation into a dirt strip at Molsen Lake Lodge in Manitoba Canada. I do not think our Indian guides had ever seen a jet before the way the were gathering around the plane and carrying on.



I managed to catch quite a few big gators on that trip.

The most fun I ever had flying was getting my commercial sea plane rating just after graduating from college. I got the rating in a Piper Super Cub on floats up at Northwoods Aviation in Cadillac Michigan. I was quite a bit thinner and had all my hair back then. I has planning on heading for Alaska that summer, but the lure of flying jets and an eventual airline job kept me home.




I got out of aviation in 2003 because the events of 9/11 2001 made it hard to get into the airlines and I had opened my tackle shop, "Creekside Outfitters" in 2002. Creekside was doing well enough that I did not need the pay check from flying anymore and I got out. I closed Creekside in 2006 and tryed other jobs, but have recently decided to get back into aviation. I am currently working as a flight instructor for Eagle Aircraft http://www.jseagle.com/staff.php, at Porter County Airport,in Valparaiso Indiana. I will be flying corporate aircraft for a multi-national corporation within the next month.

I have had success as an instructor in the past week with two of my students passing their FAA check rides for Multi engine ratings.

Here is Loren Bailor with his Cessna 421 "Golden Eagle". Loren passed his private pilot multi engine rating check ride on 08/15/2008.


Today 08/18/2008, my student Dick Farina passed his commercial pilot multi engine instrument FAA check ride, flying Eagle Aircraft's Piper Seminole.


If anyone out there would like to learn how to fly with me follow the link to Eagle Aircraft in my links. Don't worry folks. I still consider myself as an angler who likes to fly, rather than a pilot who like to fish.

We have been having fun all summer long.

I really have to say that the steelheading in Northwest Indiana and Southwest Michigan has not been very good this summer. We had to work very hard and cover a ton of water to get any numbers of fish. Of course we have our honey holes that always produce, but fishing has been tough in general. I started off my summer on the Lakefront. The action was slow on average, but I managed a fish or 2 each time out. I did have a few awesome days, but they were much fewer than in past years.

Here is one of my best fish of the summer.














I even had a few evenings out on the pier were 2 of my rods had fish on at the same time and I had bystanders catch the second fish. Young Avery just happen to be standing by my rods when I had a double and he got to catch his first steelhead.














For me, the evenings were more productive than the early mornings.














The creeks yielded a few fish also, but we really had to work for them up until the past few days. We have manged to catch steelhead fly fishing, spinner fishing, and float fishing with various baits.Greg took this fine chromer on a white flying bunny.














The awesome #3 Indiana Orange spinner did the trick for Jeff. This silver bullet nearly ripped the rod out of his hands when it struck.
















The creeks have been fishing very well the past few days. I have been averaging 3 fish per hour spent fishing. It looks like the summer run steelies have finally began to run. The fish are chrome and the fights are unbelievable.

Okoboji Chronicles

I had the opportunity to fish Lake Okoboji in Northwest Iowa over the week surrounding the 4th of July Holiday. West Lake Okoboji is one of 3 spring fed, blue water lakes in the world. The other two are Lake Geneva in Switzerland and Lake Louise in Alberta Canada. West Okoboji is in a chain of lakes comprised of East Okoboji, Spirit Lake, Upper Gar Lake, and Lower Gar Lake. The other lakes are not considered blue water lakes and only reach maximum depths of 40 feet or less. My Wife, in-laws, and I were at Okoboji for a family wedding. We stayed at the Bridges Bay Resort, located on East Okoboji, not far from the channels leading into Upper Gar Lake and West Okoboji.

We were just a stones throw from Pure Fishing world headquarters in Spirit Lake Iowa. Pure Fishing is the parent company to Berkeley. I tried to get a tour of the factory a few times, but arrived after hours one day and they were closed on the Thursday before the 4th. Dang.

I could not help but notice the smell of Berkeley Power Bait in the air anytime we were down wind of the factory. Only an angler would know that distinct smell. On a more positive side the Fishing Factory Outlet store across the street from Pure Fishing headquarters was open and I bought a lot of tackle i really did not need.

The Fishing on Lake Okoboji was very good. I caught a number of different fish species including Large Mouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass, White Bass, Yellow Bass, Fresh Water Drum, Northern Pike, Walleye, Bluegill, and Yellow Perch. The bulk of my catch was Largemouth Bass. The Largemouth were numerous around the bridges and I caught one on nearly every cast in a few spots.
Here is an average Okoboji Largemouth Bass.

Lake Okoboji is a Pan fisherman's dream the bluegill and Yellow Perch are numerous and larger on average than I have seen anywhere.
Here is and Average Okoboji Bluegill. Most Gills were nearly twice as big as my hand.

I caught most of my fish using a slip float and #8 hook baited with a live leech. I set my floats so that the leech would be just tickling the rocks on the bottom. The technique was deadly on Okoboji Bass. The first day I landed 55 Largemouth Bass, one smallmouth bass, a dozen chunky Bluegill, 2 Drum, a Pike, and a few Perch. Okoboji is also know for it's good Walleye fishing. I was having so much fun with the bass that I did not fish for Walleye much, but did find some Walleye around the boat docks. Okoboji is very deep and drops off quickly just a few feet off shore. The end supports on most docks were in 15 to 25 feet of water and often held schools of Walleye, Perch, and Big Bluegill.
Here is an average Okobiji Walleye.


Despite the good fishing on Lake Okoboji there were not many fishermen out. This surprised me on a Holiday weekend. I started fishing at first light most mornings and did not see any other boats out on the lake until 8 or 9am and they were mainly pleasure boaters. Lake Okoboji and surrounding lakes are heavily developed and the is little un-developed shoreline. Most of the shoreline is lined with cottages, resorts, and condos. It was nearly impossible to fish the natural shoreline from a boat, because of all the protruding docks. Most of my fishing was done from docks and around bridges. By noon most days the Lakes were a massive swarm of pleasure boats.
Here is a short of the massive floatilla, lining up to see the fireworks on the 4th of July.