All last week I was hearing report after report of a great bite going on near shore, up and down the entire Wisconsin coast line of Lake Michigan. I was determined to get over there this past weekend but was being stymied by the fact that my efforts to find a crew were coming up empty.
Finally, I hooked up with Art Green and he brought along his brother-in-law Mike to fill out a 3-man crew for my 18′ lund. Never having launched from the Port Washington harbor, this ended up working out quite well since both Art and Mike have fished here before. It never hurts to have people along who have experience in how a particular port is laid out. Especially when you plan on returning to said port in the dark!
We all arrived and met in the parking lot of the Port Washington harbor and got busy rigging up the boat. We launched around 3:30pm and promptly headed out to see what was in store for us.
Unfortunately, the afternoon bite was slowwww….and several hours went by with no action what-so-ever. Finally I made the decision to pull lines and move elsewhere. We ran south several miles and dropped lines for a 2nd time. By now, afternoon was over and we were only and hour or so away from sunset when we finally got our first bite which turned out to be a decent size king salmon. It hit one of our flasher/fly setups and probably weighed around 8-9lbs.
That was it for daylight action though. It was well after sunset when a bigger fish finally smacked one of our wire dipsy lines. Mike was battling that fish for a good 15 minutes when another fish hit the closest port side board line. Shortly after, another fish smacked one of the board lines on the starboard side of the boat and just like that we had a triple on our hands.
We managed to land all three fish but that was pretty much it for our action on this night.
We pulled lines and headed back to the harbor at 10:00pm to clean fish and catch a few zzz’s before O-dark thirty the following morning.
Sunday morning we launched a little before 3:00am, ran out to 45′ of water and set lines. It seems a bit surprising now but we actually got our typical 8 line spread completely set before our first bite. (2 riggers, 2 wire dipsys, 4 board lines) After that though, it was game on!
It seems a little surprising now because normally on mornings like this you get hit repeatedly before you can finally get all your spread set.
Eight different fish made there way into the boat before sunrise with our best baits being magnum glow spoons. Our board lines got hit the most but we also caught at least one fish each on a rigger and wire dipsy rod.
Each time the bite slowed a little, we slid out to slightly deeper water and managed to find a few more active fish. By 9:00am we pulled our final fish from 110′ of water. A 3-man, 15 fish limit in the box, we pulled lines and made our way back to the harbor.
There are very few harbors along the Wisconsin shoreline of Lake Michigan that I have not fished out of. Port Washington will be an easy one to remember and I’m already looking forward to visiting again soon!