Lake Michigan, Milwaukee, July 5th & 6th

Its hard to believe but the salmon fishing just keeps getting better & better for those of us on the west shore of Lake Michigan.
With most of my family in town for a niece’s wedding this Saturday, taking Thursday & Friday off for a couple days of salmon fishing with brothers & nephews seemed like a great idea. All that was needed was for the weather and the fish to cooperate. That happened in spades!

Thursday morning:
We started out in 45′ of water just south of the Filtration Plant heading north into some pretty good size residual rollers. Dropped the probe down and found the cold water didn’t start until 20′ below the surface.
Set swr rigger at 15′ and mono rigger at 30′. Wire dipsy’s on a 3 setting out 35′ and 40′. Two boards on each side with 2, 3, 4 & 5 color lead. All lines pulling an assortment of both magnum & regular extended glow spoons. Eight lines out by 3:15am and first rigger fired shortly after. Total fire drill from then on till sunup. Lost two big fish at the net in the dark but still had 7 fish in the box.
Things slowed down dramatically at that point.
Switched out riggers and dipsy’s to green flashers with aqua fly’s and picked off a fish here and there as we slid deeper. Found another school fish between 120-150′ of water around mid-morning and knocked out a 3 man limit. Mostly kings, a couple bows, 1 coho that we kept. Released several short kings and 4 lakers.
Pulled lines at 10:15am. (23-30)

Friday:
On the water and setup with a six rod spread by 3:00am in 40′ of water straight out from Bradford beach. Probe showed cold water only 10′ below the surface. Set swr rigger at 10′ and mono rigger at 15′. Wire dipsy’s on 3 setting set at 25′ & 30 ft. Three color board on port side and 4 color board on starboard side. All lines once again pulling assortment of extended glow reg. & magnum spoons.
No bait on screen and only one small king (released) and one big king just short of filtration plant before running into a large mat of weeds. Started marking large schools of bait fish at the same time.
Pulled all lines and moved out to 50′ of water. Winds started to pick up a little from the Northeast which worked out great as it seemed to push all the weeds closer to shore. Dropped lines once again on a north heading in 50′ of water just as the sun was rising.
For the next two hours, we could not keep our riggers or dipsy’s in the water running a mix of magnum glow spoons and aqua fly’s behind green flashers.
One wire dipsy’s got sidelined due to a massive entanglement with the 4 color board line so most of the damage was pretty much done with two riggers and starboard wire dipsy.
By 7:00am, we were the only boat left in 50′ of water when the run ended. We were sitting on 11 fish at that time.
Slid deeper, fixed the port wire dipsy rod during the slow down and added an 8 color and full core to fill out my typical 8 rod spread.
Found more fish in 75-80′ of water and knocked out our 3 man limit, pulling lines at 9:00am with five fish over 15lbs.
My heaviest ever 3 man box of fish.

All in all, its hard to believe it could have turned out any better. Yeah, we had some snafu’s out on the water. Lines get tangled, lost a couple of big fish right at the net and so on. But you learn pretty quickly that plenty of weird stuff happens out here on the big water and you have to take it in stride. Being ready for it and moving on is important. Fix what you can, change what you can and working together as a team will go a long, long way and help insure that the next time you might be able to change the out come.
Anyone who thinks they’re going to land everyone of these fish is in for a rude, rude awakening as big King Salmon just don’t play by the same rules as other fresh water fish.
Sometimes you win and sometimes the fish wins.
And that my friend, is exactly why I’m totally addicted to this kind of fishing.