South-Eastern Wisconsin Steelhead Fishing Report : 03/21/2010

The Steelhead fishing has never been better in Southeastern Wisconsin if you are familiar with its water and know how to get away from crowds and fish a variety of water.

This past Sunday two friends and I made it out to a spot few make it to and managed to land 16 steelhead in under 3 hours. All were landed on flies, spawn sacs, and hair jigs. Fast water held steelhead that I plucked with a variety of flies swung swiftly through the minefield of fish. My friends pulled some wild fish out the slower moving tailouts with spawn and hair jigs.

I have never had such an action packed morning Steelhead fishing in my life. It is the kind of fishing everyone dreams of and when it comes you can barely stop smiling for a second. Fish ranged from 5-12 pounds and more males were caught than females, but only my a small margin. All but two of the females we caught had already spawned but were still very bright.

This is a good learning tool, above pictured are two Steelhead of almost exactly the same size, the top male and the bottom female. You will notice the male has a longer mouth, which extends much past the eye, while the females mouth is smaller. The male has the double red stripe, which develops deep into spawning. Males generally have larger heads, some develope a kype, or hooked jaw, you will notice the length of the gill plate is greater than that of the female.

Here is Mike with a larger male of the day.

We had multiple times during the morning in which we had two anglers hooked at the same time, we even landed a couple doubles and photo opportunities presented themselves! We took care to keep the Steelhead in the water at all times, even when unhooking and only lift them for a photo or two. All 16 fish were released.

Double steel next to my wonderful fly rod.

More double trouble.

All told we lost count of lost fish but I was broken off three times and had two more shake my hook. The action was non-stop and the fish were in the mood to pounce. At first light I made my first drift and watched a steelhead shoot up 3 feet to meet my fly and smash it, I missed that first hook set, but it got my adrenaline pumping so 5 minutes later I certainly hit my second.

We had three holes to share between the 3 of us and a 4th and 5th were downstream just about a quarter mile. It made for great rotation, hook up a few times, sit out for a minute and change places and start fishing again. A great way to share the water.

The male fish were certainly more aggressive and would charge streamers and jigs, females weren't shy, but would do little to meet you half way, casts needed to be landed with precision and depth perception while stripping the fly to their strike zone was crucial.

Get out if you can. There are fish to be taken from Sheboygan all the way to the state line and you'll be sorry if this season passes without getting your hands on some Lake Michigan Steel.

Mike's First Steelhead

A fellow named Mike emailed me with some questions about Steelhead fishing a few months ago. I did my best to help him in any way, and so did the Chicago Trout Bum. I had a nice email in my inbox this morning.

Here is part of the email:

Thought I'd write to personally thank you yet again. Have been out a few times already this year, but nabbed my first spring run steelhead yesterday.

I now FULLY understand the obsession. It was wild. I only got to get out for about an hour after work, but as I came around a bend I saw at least 2-3 of them swirling around in a deeper pool. 2 casts is all it took.

I also hooked up with two others but lost one very quickly (2-3 seconds) and lost another one when it ran 40 yards downstream and underneath a log!

Two casts is all it took, now that my friends, is poetry.

Here is a photo of his first Steelhead ever, something to be extremely proud of. I remember my first Steelhead well, but we'll save that for another post.

Mike wanted to know the strain of it and he guessed chambers creek, by the shape of it and by the time of year I would wager his guess is right on. I applaud him for diligence in research into Steelhead Strains of Lake Michigan. I wrote up an article on that, you can find it here accompanied by some photographs of Steelhead that I have caught myself.

Images From Great Lakes Angler

I apologize to you, my readers, for lack of new substance once again. Work is keeping me very busy at the moment and it looks like before this week is done I will clock somewhere near 70-80 hours. I had a free day last weekend and spent it behind the lens of a camera. Here is one of the images from the shoot. There are loads more that have yet to be sorted yet, but until they are sorted here is at least something to show you I'm still out there.

We spent close to an hour waiting for a break in the clouds to make this beauty glow like she does in this frame. Enjoy.

Lake Michigan Ice and West Winds

Recently I posted photographs of a few miles of shore ice attached to Illinois as I flew over it toward New York.

The recent west winds have broken off the entire shoreline and sent it out toward Michigan. I checked out the satellite photos today and found these gems.

Here you can see the ice breaking from the shore.

Lake Michigan

Google Life Collection : Great Lakes Angler

Tonight I made a bit of discovery using google image search. If you type into the search bar : source:life "xxxxxx" anything you want, it will search their newly scanned archives of all of the Life Magazine articles and feed you the images associated with the articles it finds.

Thus a search of "source:life greatlakes" will get you images of the great lakes from articles from decades ago, which makes for some great images that you have likely never seen.

I naturally tried "source:life wisconsin" and found this beautiful trout stream image.

Here is another from "source:life greatlakes"

Finally this great image of "the Swanson family" on Oak Street Pier with a trot line out for yellow perch. This image was taken in 1950.

Have a look yourself, you might enjoy it.

Chicago Trout Bum : A Year in Pictures

The Chicago Trout Bum, a (becoming) longtime friend of the Great Lakes Angler put together a good looking slide show of Trout and Salmon catches during the fall run of 2009. I make an appearance sporting a hefty Seeforellen Brown Trout, and a few other photographs I have taken of my own fish or fish friends of mine have landed made the show. There is plenty of eye candy from dime bright hens to tuna sized trout in here so buckle up and have a good watch.

Check out the Chicago Trout Bum here.

Fish Eye Guy Photography

Photographs of native and non-native trout in their rivers. This fellow hikes to remote locations, and gets in the faces of these fish with his lenses. Amazing stuff. This is everything I want to do. So much perfection.

Native Redband

I emplore you to check out the website.

Historical Willow River Falls Dam : St. Croix County

Near and dear to the Great Lakes Angler, due to their proximity to my childhood home in Hudson, Wisconsin, stand the Willow Falls. Below the falls here on the Willow River is where I caught my first Wisconsin Brook Trout, Rainbow Trout, and Brown Trout. I stumbled upon these photographs of the Willow Falls Dam before it was removed in 1992 as well as this photograph of the falls before the dam went in.

The falls before 1992 while the dam was fully functional.

The falls pre-dam in the 1800's.

The falls and cliffs that surround them are one of Wisconsin's treasures, a place all Great Lakes Anglers should feel right at home.

The Chicago River

Keeping tabs on the water and the city I live in. Shot this tonight on the walk to the train from work.

Kinzie Street Bridge

White Bear Lake : Winter Carnival : Ice Fishing Tournament is Back!

White Bear Lake will host what was an old tradition, the Winter Carnival Ice Fishing Tournament, and event that used to draw 10,000 people to the lake for a day of frozen knuckles, flopping fish, and prizes. They shut the tournament down in 1982, but now, for the first time in nearly 30 years, it's going to be back for the 2010 carnival this winter.

Photograph by Great Lakes Angler (on Lake Michigan, sorry I don't have any ice on WBL)

The full story at WCCO News.

Tamanawis : Scottish Fly Blog : Photo Essay

From Tamanawis, a Scottish Fly Fishing Blog. The season's end photo essay.

"In autumn, who needs words?"

Lovely stuff!

Grant Park and Milwaukee Salmon Seeking : 10/25/209

To sum it up quickly, it was a day I won't soon forget chasing king salmon with Mike. The day started early, we gathered all our research from this week, reports, flow data, hunches and river experience and decided we would focus on the tributaries with the smallest water sheds, as they will have dropped fastest from the rain.

We started off at a small tributary between Chicago and Kenosha, we hiked a mile an a half through the woods and fields to make it to this tributary. Mike had decided he would rather wear his waders than carry them, and paid the price. His socks and even jeans were soaked through with blood by the time we reached the beach. His feet had blisters from all the wading last weekend. He soldiered on and didn't complain, like a real fisherman.

This first river (even though it was beautiful) didn't produce salmon, steelhead, or any signs of life what so ever. We hiked back after taking some photos in the early morning light in the tall grass and changing leaves and headed north.

We arrived at Oak Creek and witnessed the throng of anglers at the main hole, we started at my favorite bend down stream and it was not long until I hooked my first King of the day. I was casting an Egg Sucking Leech upstream and drifting it down towards myself through the rapids. I made a novice mistake, not stripping my line back in fast enough so as I set the hook it took most of the height of my rod to get the line tight. The fish rolled a couple times on top of the water near my feet and was lost to a poor hook set.

After meeting a local named Andrew and shooting the breeze with him for a while I walked downstream to Mike who had called me with the good news that he too had hooked (and landed) his first fly rod salmon of the day. I landed one from the same hole as he did, on my hand tied ESL, (photographs of the actual fly I caught it on and instruction on tying it are in the post below.

We were getting tired of small stream fishing with its canopy of branches reaching for our flies and small holes with too much fishing pressure so we pressed on to the Milwaukee River.

On the way to the Milwaukee I wanted to stop at the harbor to see if anything was happening.

The rest of the day was constant action, as we stopped at the harbor to see 2 people hook up on skein under a float in under 5 minutes. We parked the car, grabbed our float rods and our salmon skein from a couple of weekends ago which we had in the cooler just in case we tired of fly fishing.

We had more than 50 take downs, with a good number of them resulting in hook ups. I landed 2 browns and other than that, we only landed Kings.

The best story from the day was when Mike hooked up with what would turn out to be a 21.5 pound King Salmon. He was using 6 pound fluorocarbon line and had to use a very light touch to get the king near the net. Time after time the fish neared the wall only to sprint out to deeper waters, far beyond the reach of the net. A crowd gathered as we got glimpses of how large this fish really was, a huge tail would flip out of the water and the crowd would gasp.

Mike finally got it to the surface and I reached down with a borrowed net with a 12-15 foot long handle. As Mike pulled the fish to the surface I began slipping the net under the fish. Suddenly the line snapped and, in what reminded me of the sounds of a sporting event, the two dozen spectors let out a combined gasp and awwww as the salmon dissapeared below my net. I lept forward and leaned over the railing with all my speed and might, being careful not to lose balance. I extended my arms as far as I could and thrust the net below where the fish had slipped into the water. I quickly snapped the net back toward the surface and out it came, with Mike's tuna of a salmon sitting like a massive beast in the net. The crowd turned that awww into a booming cheer and everyone croweded around to pat mike on the back and examine his catch. We quickly got a scale on the salmon and let it take the dive back into Lake Michigan. A fish for my memory banks, I won't forget this one.

We were at the discharge across from the Alterra on the lake front. Every time the discharge would start flowing it was every man for himself. At one point just at dusk there were 5 fish on at once in that small space with 15 fishermen in it. Lines were flying everywhere, people were running and yelling and laughing and trying their best to reverse the tangle of salmon. Successfully I might add, as all 5 were netted after 30 minutes of chaos.

Thanks Mike for coming with me for a memorable day. We've done well this year, and now Coho and Steelhead are knocking on the door. What a place we live, what a fishery we have.

What a day... until next time, I'll see ya out there.

Lake Erie Algae Satellite Photograph

Recent increases in algae in Lake Erie worry scientists (and locals...)

I flew over the lake yesterday afternoon and could tell there were subtle shifts in color, although it was a bit hazy, easier to see from space : as you can see below.

Fly Fishing Photography : Beck Photographers

Barry and Cathy Beck, photographers specializing in photographing the art of fly fishing certainly have a good job. There website can be found here along with hundreds of images of places that will make you want to be there.

If anyone is interested in paying me to come along and photograph you fishing... it would certainly be something I would be up for.

Fishing continues to improve on the Lake Michigan tributaries as the last of the fall Chinook Salmon get into the river. Look at all those beautiful salmon in that river above, if only the Milwaukee River had color like that.

Photography : Albatrosses Following a Killer Whale

A small camera attached to an albatross captured this photograph recently of a group of albatrosses following a killer whale in order to forage for food.


This kind of thing puts a smile on my face. The camera weighs 3 oz and 4 were attached to 4 separate birds to document their journeys and take temperature and altitude readings along with the photographs.

The full article, courtesy of the New York Times, can be found here.

Here is a quote from the article : "The camera is about an inch in diameter and five inches long, weighs less than three ounces and includes depth and temperature sensors. It was installed on four albatrosses at Bird Island, off the tip of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic."

Great Lakes Angler : View From Point Betsie

A Photograph from Point Betsie taken a couple of months ago, photographs like this on the computer help make the long winter a little bit shorter.

Colorado Rainbow Trout : User Submitted

An old room mate and long time friend of mine, Howie, photographed this trout.  This was one of his first (but not last I'm sure) trout on his fly rod.  Howie spent the summer in Colorado working for the forest service.  I hope to meet with him soon to drift flies through long sweeps in the Milwaukee River, waiting for a Steelhead to explode from the water with one of Howie's flies in it's lip.

Thanks for the photograph Howie, may there be thousands more like this one in the years to come.

Howie is a student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, he still shoots slide film and I have a lot of respect for his decision to do that.  I'm sure this 35mm slide looks just about as beautiful as the actual trout did on the sunny day he landed it.

This is the river from which he caught the fish.  An amazingly beautiful place.

Bounty From the Garden of the Great Lakes Angler

Tomatoes, beans, and green peppers. This is my first year with a real garden. It's been a pleasant one aside from a small mid summer war with a rabbit and some mysteriously vanishing tomatoes this fall.

The joys that the sun and the water bring...

Fields of Gold

This last weekend I took the Amtrak home from Milwaukee. Between Milwaukee and Chicago I took a few photographs while speeding through the beautiful golden fields of South-Eastern Wisconsin.

Soon the rivers of Milwaukee river be blanketed in golden leaves and the salmon will be golden to match them.

It's beautiful here.

2009 Great Lakes Forever Photo Contest Winners

Some impressive great lakes photography from both the professional and armature divisions in this photo contest.

Thirty Mile Point in Winter

1st place, amature division, Gerri Jones - Wilson, NY