Salmon in deep water

Another week of waiting for the salmon to show up. This week we again fished that 90 to 120 foot of water and caught from 6 to 14 fish per trip, however the lake trout still made up the majority of the creel. There are some steelhead, coho and some 4 year old salmon mixed in but most of the fish are lake trout. Saturday we fished in 105 foot of water in the morning and caught six fish-two lake trout three steelhead and one 4 year old Chinook and lost or missed another 12. The sea flea is so bad in this 100 foot range that you needed to constantly clean your lines so, with the afternoon charter, we decided to do some looking and ran out to 220 foot of water and trolled out to 265 foot and back in to 220 foot. We boated eight fish-four 4 year old Chinook and four coho and lost or had another 10 hits.

In the 100 foot of water depth, we fished metal Gold Star silver and white metal flashers with green and white Spin n Glows on the bottom and Ace Hi green splatter back and green glow ladder back plugs on 200 copper. A variety of flasher and fly combinations produced on the dipsy divers and downriggers, but nothing consistent. In the 240 foot of water it was 300 copper with silver bladed Pro Troll flashers and Rapture No See Um flies and small stingers (orange and green and orange and blue) on the 200 coppers. The Downriggers were run 45 and 50 foot down with stingers as the base lure and on add a lines 10 foot up. Dipsy Divers were run at 100 and 200 foot out with silver bladed (mountain dew, mixed veggie, all silver, green) Pro Troll flashers and mirage and oceana flies.

Some good news on the perch. There were reports of limit catches of perch in 20 to 30 foot of water, however this was 9 miles south off the clay banks of Glenn. One boat caught 150 perch in 2 hours. Perch fishing off of Saugatuck and Holland was spotty with some decent catches one day and then nothing the next.

There are a lot of salmon out in the deeper water and a tremendous amount of 3 year classes of bait. Because there is so much bait in this water, it may be some time before the salmon stage in the 100 foot range and we will have to run out to deep water to fish. For more information or for charter reservations contact me at captron@chartermichigan.com.