Lake Michigan Trib Salmon/Steelhead 9/22 report

I made the drive from the Twin Cities for a good old fashion cheesehead wedding last weekend. I love flyfishing but had never fished the tributaries running into Lake Michigan on the Wisconsin side yet. I snuck my waders along with my suit and tie and hit the river before the wedding.

Well by pure dumb luck it rained the entire night before and continued through the day. The rivers were full of fresh kings with a few steelhead to boot. My first day ever fishing there I went 12/20 on kings, 1 jack steelhead, 1 30″ chrome steelhead, and more 4″ smallies than you could shake a stick at. All fish came on chartruese and black or pink and black egg sucking leeches.

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Chrome!

Looks like the root river but how did you get the river all by yourself? I’ll be out there in a week, I hope you left a few.

about 2 hours north of the root. We had it all to ourselves because it is smaller stream. I guess it is totally hit or miss depending on the flow. But as you can see, we hit because of the rain! We tried a larger river first but the number of people “fishing” with lures with large treble hooks and “accidentally” hooking them in the dorsal fin, tail, etc. was getting annoying.

True the salmon do die once they spawn, but it still is sickening to see people rip hooks through the water snagging them with 50 lbs. test. Whatever happened to the sport of fishing? Doesn’t the joy come from fooling them to bite and fighting them instead of dragging them out of the water tail first.

I completly agree. We tried oak creek last year, what a joke. Spoons and trebles flying every where. These fish were line shy to 4 pound test! The milwaukee river wasn’t to bad. At least its a big river with alot of room to get away from the traffic.