Lake Michigan Salmon report 8-17-08

What a weekend to spend on Lake Michigan! I was able to take over a good friend, Bill, for his first taste of salmon fishing this weekend. We rolled into Two Rivers, WI friday night about 7pm. After a quick stop at Seagull Marina to pick him up a license, we launched the boat and headed for deep water. Unlike last time out, the water had warmed up quite a bit. The surface temp was 69 pretty much everywhere we boated. We headed out and started outside the nets in about 110′. With 2 of us in the boat we were able to run 6 lines. We set 2 down riggers, 2 dipseys, and 2 pump handles, and ran this setup the rest of the weekend. We gradually trolled out deeper and once we hit 135′ we caught our first fish, a nice 2 year old king salmon, on a dipsy. We ended up with 6 that first night all between 130-140′. I usually always try to get out in the daylight the first time just to make sure eveything is working right and to show the ropes to the rookie. It is also nice to get a layout of the nets as to avoid any issues.

Saturday morning found us at the access at 4:30am and fishing by 5. We setup in the same area. With the full moon I expected to catch more fish while it was dark, but it just didn’t happen. Once the sun started peeking out the bite started. Since I have to run the boat, Bill got the honors of reeling in almost all the fish. He got started off right with a 19.4lb fish followed by an 18lber. In no time he was complaining his forearms were hurting. We ended the morning at 9:30 with 6 more fish to show for our efforts.

After some eats and a nap, we hit the water again at 5pm, back to the same area. We went quite a while without any action trying deeper water. Once we got back to 137′, fish on. Twice in a row I was on the phone to the wife and then a friend and had to hang up due to a pesky fish. At 8:30pm we noticed some lightning far off to the north. Since I don’t like tempting mother nature we started pulling lines in short order. While pulling lines the last down rigger left in went off giving us our 4th fish for the night and limit for the day.

Sunday morning we were only able to boat 2 fish and had to come home just shy of our possession limit. From the chatter on the radio there were a lot of people having slow fishing, I’m sure due to the front.

We did find a pretty good pattern to our fishing. The hot rod was a metalic green dipsey on a #3 setting with a green flasher and green crinkle fly 150′ out. Our down riggers were set at 100′ with a blu flasher and blue fly nad at 130′ with a green flasher and green crinkle fly. There was a good temperature break on the Sub Troll from 90′ where it was 62 to 100′ where it was 55 degrees. On our pump handles we used 12oz weights and a mixed of flashers and magnum Pro King spoons. We ended up going 18 for 23 with 2 real big fish lost due to a broken swivel and a broken line. 16 of the fish were kings with a coho and rainbow mixed in. Half of the kings were 4 year old fish, some real brutes. It was probably my best trip for average sized fish in recent years. The weather man was of coarse wrong, again. Fortunatly it did not blow much. The seas were about 2′ with occasional bigger with caps each day. Usually I like to troll with my T8, but to stay in the depth we wanted I had to used the 250 four stoke for my trolling. This was the first time I have done this and was really pleased with the way it trolled down and opushed the Skeeter anywhere I wanted from 1.5 to 2.5mph quartering the waves.