Lake Michigan Salmon Fishing – Milwaukee

My first salmon fishing trip for the summer of 2010 was definitely well worth the wait. The timing worked out perfectly for a change and plenty of kings & coho’s along with a couple of lake trout & brown trout were willing & ready to attack our baits. We also managed one steelhead but unfortunately we didn’t put all five species in the boat on the same day. That would have been my first ever Lake Michigan style grand slam.

We left my house at 2:15am on Sunday morning with the 18′ lund in tow. Joining me for his first ever Lake Michigan salmon fishing trip was my 19 year old nephew from Dallas, Texas. He recently completed his first year at Northwestern University where he plans to get an engineering degree. Also joining us was long time friend Dick Straub. I warned Tyler early on that Dick has a bad habit of always pulling in the biggest fish on these trips. And as usual, Dick pulled off his big fish trick once again by landing a 21 pound king on a bloody nose spoon behind a 3 color lead core line. His biggest to date. Congrats on that big fish Dick!

We motored slightly north out of the Milwaukee Harbor and setup in 50′ of water. Being gone from the big water trolling experience for over a year cost us some time getting setup but the fish were definitely there waiting for us. I let out line for the down rigger and before I could even hook it up to the ball a nice 7lb king smacked the magnum green tiger spoon from Red Hook Tackle. That was at 5 minutes to 5:00am and I didn’t get our 8th line in the water until well after 7:00am.
Early in the morning both rigger lines were firing. The swr rigger was down 27′ and the other one was down 22′ over 50-60′ of water. Temps on the surface were running around 63 degrees & anywhere from 42 to 48 degrees down 22 feet.
The three color lead core also picked up several fish for us on a regular bloody nose spoon. By 8:00am I switched both rigger lines to flasher fly combo’s. A little boy blue fly behind a white 8″ Pro Chip on one rigger and the same fly behind a 8″ green Pro chip on the other. The white one was the better of the two but both caught several fish while the dipsy’s only had drive bye’s and one break off. Board lines with spoons picked up an occasional fish as
well.
We ended the day going 16 for 20 and quit about 11:00am when the wind started kicking up a little stronger than we liked. Two lakers & one shaker were released as I favor the kings, coho’s & smaller rainbow’s.

Dick’s forearm was apparently to sore for our day two trip on Monday morning so good buddy Mike Jacobs took his place.
We headed south out of the Harbor just to try some different water and ended up with similar results. Spoons picked up a few more fish but the same flasher fly’s still caught our better fish overall. A couple of brown trout showed up on the ends of our lines along with some coho’s and the rest were all kings. Water temps and lines run were pretty much the same as the day before. I have to believe results would have been about the same had we stayed a little longer but Jake had to be home no later than 1:00pm so we quit fishing at 9:30am even though we were still picking up fish here & there going 14 for 21 of which four were shakers that went back in the drink.
All in all, everyone had a blast and took home a pretty good pile of salmon fillets to boot. Can’t wait to do it again!