After hearing and reading many, many reports about the “Hot” bite going on for salmon up and down the entire Wisconsin Lake Michigan coast line, I decided it was time for my annual shake down salmon fishing excursion this past weekend.
Weather and NOAA websites were check repeatedly prior to the weekend and everything looked about as good as it could get.
Waves of less than one foot and no severe weather anywhere in the forcast for the entire weekend plus continued reports of fish virtually committing suicide on just about anything put in the water had me more than a little anxious for this weekend fishing trip.
Boat partners are a must for this kind of fishing so invites were extended and pretty much excepted on the spot by John Schultz and Kevin Sime. Both had been out on the big pond with me or Greybeard in years past which is always good because it takes a lot of team work and co-operation to pull off a good trip on Lake Michigan. I knew Kevin could drive the boat while John and I set and attended lines. That part of the plan worked out quite well.
Other parts of the plan though…..well, that’s why you take these “shake down” fishing trips in the first place. To learn what works, what doesn’t work and what not to do again.
On Lake Michigan you can tailor you fishing plan to target certain species. That doesn’t mean you won’t catch other species but hopefully, it does mean you will come away with more of the species your actually targeting than you would otherwise. I love catching those extremely hard fighting, tackle testing King Salmon first and foremost. The fact that they taste great on the grill or smoked is a heck of a nice bonus.
My 2nd favorite species would have to be Steelhead. They fight quite well also and taste even better on the grill followed by Coho Salmon which taste the best of all of them.
Since we were primarily targeting King’s, we pretty much planned on using flasher/fly’s on the ends of most of our lines. This technique is a long proven producer for many, many charter captains up and down the coast of Lake Michigan.
When we felt a need for something different, we went to magnum spoons and then regular spoons. I had other baits along, but none of those ever hit the water as the flasher/fly’s and spoons did there jobs quite nicely.
We fished from about 4:30 to 10:00pm on Saturday and 4:00 to 10:30am on Sunday morning boating more than 20 fish ranging in size from about one pound up to about 15 or 16lbs for our largest king. We also lost several fish, including a few big ones which tested our tackle, fish fighting skills and left us wishing our encounter would have worked out a little differently.
On both days we successfully landed triple’s but then later got our butt’s kicked by solo salmon that decided running cross ways thru our trolling spread was a good idea. It proved to be a good idea for them but didn’t work out so well for us.
All in all, it was a very successful shake down cruise and I have an excellent idea on which area’s of my arsenal need shoring up and which parts of it are working just fine.
To top it off, the three of us had a great time out on the big lake and we all went home with some very large coolers filled with fresh salmon for the grill and the smoker.
I’m pretty sure John & Kevin feel the same way about this part – I can’t wait until I get to do it again!