To start off this was my first time ever on superior, I was always a little intimidated by the lake but finally figured it was time to give it a try. Chose Grand Marais as the place to go because I had some friends up there bear hunting so we figured it would be a good time to go visit them and check out the town. The intention of the trip was not a diehard fishing trip so this seemed like a great area for a long weekend.
After some tips from Grant Sorensen and Mark Bruzek we headed up and made a quick stop into Marine General in Duluth for some Jims Flashback spoons and we were on the way.
Hit the water about 8:30am on Saturday launching from the Grand Marais harbor and not knowing what to start with we put out a down rigger down 80 feet with a spoon, leadcore off the boat 7 colors with a spoon, leadcore off the boat 8 colors with a spoon, and a flat line TTD-11 tail dancer on a board and ran 2.5mph give or take a little bit. I run the standard suffix leadcore 18lb with the 5′ per color dive at 2mph and 30′ Trilene XT 10lb leaders. About 20 minutes into our first run the 7 color line off the boat doubled over and it was fish on! During mid fight the 8 color rod doubled over and we now had a double! After landing both fish which were nice Kings we swapped out the flat line TTD-11 for a segmented leadcore and spoon and it was steady action from there on out.
In the afternoon we had a couple buddies jump in so we played around more with presentations and colors and ended up reverting back to 7-8 colors of lead and spoons. Jim’s Flashback spoons in variations of pink and size N2 seemed to work the best. Other than running spoons all the equipment we used was just my standard walleye trolling gear.
Fished Sunday afternoon and had a couple other people jump in and it was the same program again.
Kings were scattered throughout the whole time fishing, our lake trout were mainly in the evening, and had one coho mixed in.
To re-cap:
Saturday the surface temp was 62.4 to 64.6.
Sunday afternoon was 58.5-60.3.
We ran 120-260 FOW.
Running 7-8 colors at 2.5mph I am guessing baits were running 28-35 feet down.
Never went more than a quarter mile from the harbor.
Jim’s Flashback spoons in variations of pink
