This is my first trip to Superior this year. I’d been hoping to get conditions and schedule to align for a mere day trip to the Duluth area but never happened. This is a good consolation. This trip happened because I had been hoping to fish the couples tournament on Mille Lacs but obviously that didn’t happen. The boat was looking far too clean if you know what I mean.
We left home around 11pm on Thursday night for an all night run to Grand Portage so we could be out to the island as early as possible so we could get a good campsite. Success. We averaged about 20 mph across the pond and got the site we wanted.
We told the guys at the dock about our trip and asked if we’re going to take a nap now. Not a chance. We headed for the SE side of the island to start out fishing. We were hoping to find cooler water but only found 57 degrees and didn’t drop to 46 degrees until you hit 80′. So we started out in about 80′ and before long we had a few lakers in the boat. We picked up a 35″ laker pretty early in that run and continued down the line. We fished for about 4-5 hours and picked up about 15 lakers. We headed back into cam around 2 so we could get situated and make dinner for an afternoon run.
We took about a 1.5 hour nap, made dinner and headed back out. This time we hit Fisherman Reef. We pulled another 5 or so lakers before sunset and headed back for the night.
Next morning after breakfast we headed back to the same place on the SE side and fished until about 1pm or so and wound up with about 20 mostly small lakers and headed back to camp for dinner again.
Had an early dinner and headed out to Rock of Ages lighthouse for the evening. We picked up 2-3 lakers before we got 4 lines in the water and continued trolling off the reef we were on only to strike out for an hour after leaving the reef. Went right back to the reef and fished for the rest of the evening and managed a total of 51 lakers for the day. Right before sunset the big girls came out to play and got the biggest of the trip (37″) plus a few others over 33″. That was a great afternoon even though I caught a downrigger ball on the reef, but didn’t lose it. Just managed to blow a fuse. Got it fixed and we were back in business.
Got up Sunday and fished Rock of Ages area and picked up about 20 smallish lakers before making the voyage home. The trip back across averaged about 30 mph. That was a top 3 crossing for sure. Beautiful weather and calm seas.
Learned a lot on this trip. I brought my new Fish Hawk TD to measure water temp to get some sort of rhyme or reason we were catching fish at a particular depth. I’ve always been told to look for 46-48 degree water. I found that the fish were in that water but only preferred to bite lures about 20′ above that temp.
The best colors were yellow/orange. This combo caught probably 80% of the fish. In fact, one spoon caught almost 1/2 the fish. We used mostly spoons but also tried flasher fly with some success. About 75% of the fish came on downriggers with very few on dipsys and fewer on LC. Smaller spoons seemed to be preferred but I also have learned that no bait is too big up there at times. Just look at the 10″ laker on the 7″ spoon.
Great trip for sure. While the waves were a little uncomfortable at times the weather was fantastic. No real catastrophes always makes for a successful trip to Isle Royale.
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Those big lakers make Mille Lacs 
