Lake Michigan Salmon & Trout Fishing – Milwaukee

Finally…..we caught a break and had some nice weather for fishing on Lake Michigan. And to top it off, the fish were cooperating.
For several weeks in a row, we either ran in to wind & waves making boat control extremely difficult or we just plain couldn’t get on active fish. And the few times we did get on active fish, we ran into some tough luck and basically, got our butts handed to us by the fish.

After changing our plans numerous times through out the week, Gary Sanders and I finally settled on heading to Milwaukee at O-Dark Thirty this past Saturday morning. We did this despite knowing there was a rather large tournament based out of McKinley Marina. (Brew City Salmon Tournament) Our plan was to get the boat launched, beat all the tournament guys out to the fishing grounds, not necessarily to get on the fish first but more like, “Lets just get the heck out the harbor and not get in the way”.
I stated on the way down to Milwaukee that my goal for the day was to first: catch a limit and 2nd, put a big king in the boat. The catching a limit part had a 2nd part to it, I didn’t intend to keep any Lake Trout or Brown Trout. I pretty much wanted King Salmon, Coho Salmon or Steelheads.
Neither Gary or I had any plans to quit fishing at the end of the morning so if need be, we were both willing to fish the entire day to accomplish our goals. As it turned out, we were pretty much done fishing by 1:00pm and could have limited out much sooner if we hadn’t released so many lakers.

The bite was non-existent for us in the dark as we once again never took a hit before sunrise. Right at sunrise though, the port side dipsy took off like train. Nothing like a big ole chinook putting your gear to the test right at sunrise. No big tangles, nothing went wrong, and although it may have taken Gary more than one swipe with a slightly undersized net, (fortunately I couldn’t see what was going on back there) I did end up landing my biggest King of the year, weighing in at 22lbs.
Until Gary lifted it over the transom, about all I could see or hear was: Holy crap is that a big fish!
For the record, Gary is 6’4″ tall and not very easy to see around so yes, he can block out even a very big king salmon.
After that first fish, the action was fairly steady for about two hours. We had about an hour lull and doing that time, we could see a bank of clouds rolling towards us from the west. Nothing threatening, just good looking cumulus clouds. And just as soon as those clouds rolled overhead, the bite picked up right on cue with steady action again until we pulled lines at about 1:00pm.

We caught that first big king in 105′ of water and for the most part trolled east toward deeper water. Several times we turned around and trolled back through area’s where we caught fish but for the most part, that didn’t pan out. So back to heading east and towards deeper water picking off fish here and there along the way. I believe the deepest we got was 220 feet.
Our best baits were Aqua flys behind green flashers. A close 2nd was LBB flys behind white flashers. Lead core rods rigged with spoons had one rip and that was it so by 9:00am, we had removed all spoons from our spread in favor of all flasher/flys.
Best rods were dipsys set at 130 & 150 early in the morning and 160 & 175 later in the day. Downriggers were next best followed closely by a full core rod.
We finished the trip at 16-21 boxing 5 kings, 2 lakers, 2 steelies and 1 coho.
I wasn’t planning on keeping a laker but I wanted to fill the smoker up on Sunday. So when this 16-1/2lb laker filled up the net, she went directly into the smoker along with that big King.
The other laker was Gary’s choice and since he caught it, who was I to say he couldn’t keep it. Especially since he’s about 4″ taller and 50lbs heavier than I am.

All in all, we had a great time out on the lake. Some great weather, lots of laughs and plenty of fish made it impossible not to have a good time.

It’s trips like this one that make us all think: I can’t wait to do that again!