Lake Michigan Salmon Fishing from Milwaukee

Most people don’t think of Milwaukee as a great place to go fishing, but with the Lake Michigan shoreline running the length of the city, great salmon and trout fishing is literally right at their doorstep. (Picture #1 – Tony Radcliffe showing off a dandy 13lb steelhead)

(Picture #2 – Dan "Tex" Miller with a nice 4 year old King Salmon)

Saturday, August 4th

Our long awaited Salmon fishing trip finally went off without a hitch today. It was actually suppose to take place last weekend but due to high NE winds, it was canceled.

So, for the 2nd Saturday in a row, I awoke at 1:00am and began preparations for the trip to McKinley Marina in Milwaukee. It’s about a 2 hour trip down I-94 and along the way I stopped to picked up fellow Lake Wisconsin fishing guide Dan "Tex" Miller and Big Sky Engineering co-worker Tony Radcliffe.

This trip was actually part of a trip swap deal between myself and Jeremy Williams.who lives in Milwaukee. Jeremy and his Dad, Jack went with me on Lake Wisconsin back in June and now we were really looking forward to joining Jeremy on his 21′ Wellcraft in search of salmon on the big pond.

It’s probably been 25 years since the last time I’ve gone salmon fishing on Lake Michigan. That would have been back in the 1980’s with my older brother Dennis and his fishing buddy Pete Adler. We went out from Door county, Wi. and as I recall, J-plugs on down riggers were the hot ticket back then.

(Picture #3 – Lucky me with the larget fish of the trip. A 35", 15.5lb King Salmon)

At 4:20am we arrived to a very busy McKinley Marina, met up with Jeremy and immediately boarded his boat. A very busy launch was a short distance away and a large parking lot was already filling up with trucks pulling trailers. Looking out over the Lake Michigan horizon I observed a large number of boat lights heading north well out from the harbor. With calm winds and only a light chop predicted for the morning, it was clear that we were going to be sharing the big lake with quite a few other salmon fisherman this morning.

Jeremy didn’t want to mix it up with all those other fishing boats so we headed south from the harbor until we reached 60′ of water where Jeremy began to put out lines in the pre-dawn darkness.

First to go out were the four down rigger lines. They went down between 35 and 55 feet with anywhere from 15 to 60′ of line behind the ball. Then out went the dipsy rods with approximately 60 feet behind the dipsy. For now, six lines was all we would run. Apparently the bite can be fast and furious in the pre-dawn darkness and Jeremy didn’t want to create a mess first thing in the morning. But on this morning, there wasn’t going to be a pre-dawn bite and we didn’t catch any fish until after the sun came up. After that, we began to pick up a fish here and a fish there.

The down riggers caught the first couple of fish which were nice eaten size Kings around the six pound range. The dipsy’s also caught two or three over the next hour or so including a couple of coho’s in the 4 to 5lb range. And for every fish we caught, we lost at least two or three. At one point, I know I lost three fish in a row.

About midmorning the bite really slowed down again. Jeremy started switching rigs around trying to find a combination that would work but the fish weren’t interested in very much for about two hours there and when we did get a hit, it was usually gone before anyone could even grab the rod.

Jeremy steered the boat to the north and towards deeper water as the crowd up there began to thin out. When we reached 80′ of water, both bait fish and game fish began to show up on the sonar and for the last hour and a half or so the bite did pick up a again.

(Picture #4 – Tony Radcliffe with another nice King)

We had two lead core rods out, one with a full core which wasn’t catching anything and another with 7 colors which was doing alright. He pulled the full core and put out a suspended weight line instead and that rig did catch us a fish or two.

One down rigger rod was doing better than all the rest. At one point it took four, 4 year old Kings in a row. This rod is what they called the SWR rig. (Secret Weapon Rig) Now obviously I can’t give you all the details on this rig or it would no longer be his SWR rig and it might also be the last time I ever get to go fishing with Jeremy. And that my friend, would be a real shame!

It is permissible to tell you what our hot lures for the day were though. Aqua Howie Fly’s behind green or white 8" coyote flashers caught the most fish overall. Our best big fish bait by far though was a double glow aqua splatter slammer spoon. I’m not sure how many different spoons Jeremy put out before he found that one but I do know that he was working hard moving different rods in and out of the water trying to come up with things that would catch us some more fish.

Jeremy, your efforts were greatly appreciated and the three of us had a great time fishing with you. It sure was a great way to get a quick education on the techniques used to catch salmon on Lake Michigan. Thanks again for taking us out Jeremy!

As for fishing out on Lake Wisconsin, I won’t be back at it again until the end of August. At that time we will be targeting crappies mostly, but expect to catch plenty of bluegills, white bass and who knows what else along the way. It should be another great fall season on Lake Wisconsin. Plenty of good dates remain, especially for late fall walleyes. If your looking for a great fishing experience, check out some of the top notch late fall walleye & sauger fishing on Lake Wisconsin.

See you on the water!

Joel "Boog" Ballweg