Fishing Report for April 24

Friday and Saturday fished Lake Superior out of Washburn, Took us a bit to find the fish Friday, but we did, and we managed to loose a lot of them, just had some bad mojo flowing for a bit, lost three coho in a row at the boat. Jess landed a nice steelhead about 18 inches long, and we landed a few more coho and kept two of them for dinner. We got the fish in shallow water, looking for mudlines with a temperature break. Our hot bait is a Reef Runner Ripstick 700 series on a planer board.

Saturday went back to where we got the fish on Friday and we were in the fish right away, we had 4 people in the boat, and we fished for about 3 hours and ended up with 2 brown trout about 16 and 18 inches long, and 4 coho in the box. Again Reef Runner Ripsticks were the hot bait.

We ran the baits on boards with only about 25 feet of line out, which was making the bait run down about 2-2.5 feet. sandy beach area’s with warm water are the ticket right now, lake temp is 36 degrees and the warm water is 43 degrees.

Good luck,
Tanner Wildes

Right on Tanner, great report. -Mark

Tanner:

Good stuff, wished I could read your report before we left for Washburn on the 25th @ 3:30 a.m. We were pretty sure that we were going to adopt the same plan that you worked with, with the only exception being that I don’t think my friend whose boat we took is running very many Reefrunner products…

Plan was to meet a friend of my friend who lives in Washburn and he would guide us for a couple of hours in the a.m. Well the new guide chose to run into the channel to an edge he was familiar with and had had friends fishing in the area doing well. Well to stay away from the other boats, decent thought and on our downwind pass of the area, we did pick up a pair of decent fish, 1 brown and 1 coho. So we made an up wind pass through the area, but then we moved to shore and our guide was done for the day.

So we packed it up for Saxon Harbor, started right from the harbor mouth and actually were hit right away picking up our first coho before we got on to the 10′ contour. We rode that up until we got closer to one of the points, where most of the trolling was being concentrated on. As we moved in it seemed that no one was really doing well, though I would bet that the first boat(s) on the scene probably did ok til the rest showed up.

With all the room allowed us by the other 7 boats moving back toward the harbor, we were able to pick up another two cohos before the Easter Dinner bell was starting to ring back Minocqua. There were some guys trolling close to shore, but we weren’t able to see any activity as we watched, but I would suspect that without the other traffic that your pattern was spot on at the time.

I have a friend who is working at Saxon as a creel clerk this summer and he had reported that the best bite in the area was exactly in the area that you worked. It was beauty day, though the Washburn area was running 1′-3′ waves, at Saxon we had to strip down as we out of the wind til we rounded the point.

Good stuff, we fished until 4 p.m. were packed by 4:30 on our way and home by 6:15 for dinner. Gotta Love Easter Steak (Angus Top Butt Sirloin) dinner off the grill. Grilled the fillets from the second pic and the three went to the smoker!!! The first pic was the two fish from the Bay…

Mark

Those fillets are an amazing red color. Thanks for the pics, Mark.