Port Washington 8/23

I made the trip to Port Washington based on some improving reports this past week and concerning weather forecasts. Milwaukee is where I normally fish, but I didn’t here much this past week and deeper water take a lot longer to reach in the ridiculous fog.
The fishing did not disappoint! The fog- what a pain in the butt, initially! Started the day crawling out to 85 feet of water straight east of the Port Washington gap and started setting lines. I knew from the previous weekend and reports to just set deep. The first line in was the Depth Raider rigger and blue flasher/aqua glow fly that has been hot- if you can use that term this year-for me this summer-60 down 15 back. Water temps were low to mid 50. Second line in, wire mag glow dipsy, 115 lOC with same FF as the down rigger. Bam! Down rigger fires with a 200 ft screamer and as we start to get a handle on it in the foggy dark, the dipsy screams. First double of the day! We swung the first fish aboard by hand as the battle on the dipsy raged on! I reset the down rigger and the B.I.L battled the second fish. 25 minutes later we had recovered the 400 feet of wire that had screamed of the reel and then had hand lined the 20 foot leader to the net. 2 nice mid teens, egg filled kings to the boat before we knew it. A quick deployment of the dipsy and we were off to setting the remaining 4 rods. By the time we had line 5 deployed and behind the board, the down rigger rod popped again. Before we could get it out of the holder, the wire dipsy rod doubled over and we were doubled up again in the dark. Landed the first, a smaller king and lost the dipsy fish as it charged the boat as the dipsy got close to the surface. I sent the down rigger back to the abyss and no more removed my hand from the drag and it fired again. Another nice, fat king. What a work out to start the day!
A hint of light was starting to show through the fog to the east so the sixth line was switch from the spoon I had originally intended run was switched to a mountain dew/ glow flasher and frog fly and sent out. We no more had it set when the 200 copper blue knight went off. Another screamer that would have us clearing the 250 copper and turning back on the fish as it had taken 2 runs for 400 feet of line. As we got back to the copper, the down rigger fired again. Two more kings that would make it aboard. And another double! A quick re-deployment and the 300 copper fired. Another nice female king. The 250 copper would fire as we started deploying the previous line and then the dipsy. Doubled up again! Lost the dipsy fish to a broken treble hook and landed another king on the copper. Finally the second down rigger down 75 with a like FF setup would fire for the ninth king in the box.
A short time later the same down rigger would fire and the fish was gone before we could get to the rod.
With the exception of the first two fish that came quickly in 85 FOW, most of the action happened between 100 and 135 FOW. No specific trolling direction was hot, finding and working cold pockets of water was key, and the fish seemed to prefer speeds of 1.7 to 1.9 on the depth raider. One hit at 1.3 as we had slowed to recover some line and turn on a screamer.
This was by far the quickest action trip of the year. I wish I would have had more time to boat that 10th fish for the 2 man limit. The fish on the right in the picture is a 25.6 pounder being weighed by another fisherman. What a beast that was!

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Art,

Just so you know, there’s 10 fish hanging from the fish rack so it looks like you two actually did catch your limit. Easy to lose track when the bites fast & furious. Been there and done that already.

As you know, we fished the afternoon out of Port. East wind wasn’t to bad when we first started and we had our first hit shortly after setting lines in 110′ of water. Landed a nice 17lb king on the 8 color lead core pulling a Moon Shine Hot Lips magnum spoon. That was the only spoon bite we would get the rest of the afternoon. On the other hand, we only had two or three spoons out at any one time.
We continued to pick off a nice king here and there on flasher/flys until about 4:30pm. Between then and 7:45pm, it was totally dead.
We had been circling a nice pocket of cold water. It was 51 degrees down 65′ in 115-150′ depth zone where as the surface water was 70 degrees. But then the east wind picked up and blew considerably harder for about 2 hrs and our pocket of cold water disappeared along with any active fish.
Thankfully, we finished off the evening with a double right as it was getting dark. One on the probe rigger with an SWR rig down 35′ and another on the full core, both pulling flasher flys.
Ended the day with 5 fish out of 6 hits. All decent Kings. (19, 18, 17, 15 & 9lbs)
Stayed overnight with the hope of getting on them better Sunday morning but the winds picked up again and with 5 footers blowing into shore, we decided not to go back out.

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Joel, the one on the far right is inconveniently being weighed on the scale on the other side of the board. I didn’t know it was there until after the photos were taken. That fish was over 25 pounds! I wish it was hung there by me! That thing had a massive girth-mostly tall, and was a male, it was stuffed with huge alwives.

The cold water seems to be important still for connecting with fish. I had hoped to make the trip out Sunday as well and was disappointed with the wind and waves when I woke. Did you venture any deeper than 150ft? I was tempted but time ran out on my trip Saturday.

I fished Port Sunday afternoon. Ended 8 for 9 with 1 LT that went back, 2 nice coho, and the rest kings. Lost one big fish that hit a j plug on a wire dipsy and screamed from 150 loc to 600 loc. Worked it back to 250 over a 20 minute period and were pulling some rods to turn on it when it came unbuttoned. First time I’ve ever had a fish that I just couldn’t wear out. Good lesson in patience. 5 hits on FF and the other 4 were on j plugs.

I have learned that it is best on fish like that, to immediately slow down the troll speed, and to just pull lines on what will be the inside of the turn and just start turning back. I chose to turn on that first dipsy hit Saturday morning after it ripped the first 150 in the blink of an eye. Some fish just don’t give up!

I haven’t seen a coho since spring, glad to see they are still around.

Art Green wrote:

I have learned that it is best on fish like that, to immediately slow down the troll speed

We had slowed down to a whopping .2 on the depth raider and .7 surface speed. I just couldn’t gain anything.

Nice work everybody! Great to see fishing finally getting good after such a brutal summer. I’ll just throw up my little report here, more as a devil’s advocate thing than anything else…

I saw earlier in the week that a bunch of cold water had moved in by Port and was really hoping to get up there, but my schedule didn’t allow for it. Got a text from Joel and talked with Art, which confirmed fishing was very good up that way, and that made my itch to fish even worse…

Had time to fish Sunday, but woke up in the morning and decided the wind was too stiff for the 18ftr, so stayed on shore even more frustrated. Wind finally laid down around 530 last night, but not enough time for me to run to port, so decided just to stay close to home and look “shallow” for out of temp staging kings.

Ended up being a good call as I went 4/5 by myself in around two hours. Had two four year old kings, both around 15lbs. (One natural, one stocker). Also had a 5lb king and a small brown that I flipped back.

Stud rod was a 7 color with blue glow plug. That rod took one of the four year olds, the 5lbr and lost a screamer. Full core with blue knight spoon took a four year old and the brown. Had a dipsy out with a Flasher Fly combo the whole time and it never got bit, but I didn’t want to take it out either because of its attraction factor.

PS>John Schultz> Kinda funny how we were talking about how neither of us own hardly any jplugs and had no intentions of buying any huh?…….

eyecatchum wrote:

PS>John Schultz> Kinda funny how we were talking about how neither of us own hardly any jplugs and had no intentions of buying any huh?…….

Yeah, I borrowed them, and now I have to buy some. It never ends.

John, were you running J-plugs with or without rattles?

Art Green wrote:

John, were you running J-plugs with or without rattles?

I believe they were without. I don’t remember hearing them rattle when I was rigging them. I borrowed them from a friend.

You definitely would have heard them rattle. It seems I catch more fish on ones with no rattles when I run them. I actually had some rigged for the weekend, but the 3rd crew member backed out to late in the game to find a replacement, so they stayed dry. I have a box full that I break out for the fall, silver bullet, silver with a blue back, silver with purple tiger back, and bone are my favorites once the sun comes up.

a firetiger looking one was the best color for us.

Nice to see the bite is picking up.

John Schultz wrote:

a firetiger looking one was the best color for us.

It’s good to hear you guys catch fish on J-Plugs. I hate those darn things. I run one every now and then, but haven’t caught a fish on one in years. But…….because I’ve got 8 of them, I always feel obligated to put one down every now and then only to be disappointed again.

Good work on the fish out of Port. Had some buddies up north that had near skunks for the weekend. What a crazy year!

I almost went up north instead of Port. Glad I didn’t. Not only was it rough Saturday afternoon for a bit, it was much worse Sunday morning and one of my crew spent a fair amount of time chumming.