Northern Minnesota Musky

It seems that just when you think you're on some big fish lately an email rolls into your inbox that makes you think.... "man that King Salmon, that huge one that towed your Kayak all over Milwaukee... that thing only weighed half as much as this fish!"

This is a good friend of mine, a relative of my girlfriend, Rich and his 47" Muskie, tipping the scales at right around 30 pounds.  Looks like the weather was beautiful up there this weekend.  Congrats on another epic fish Rich. 

Rich and I have a little competition going for first Walleye from this lake over 10 pounds or 30".  As he said in his email.... "it's not a Walleye"  but it will do!

Milwaukee Area Salmon Fishing Report : Kayak Fishing : 9/26/2010

After a busy week I've finally found time to get a bit of writing in for you all here.  Internet is finally up and running here at adventure headquarters and I expect I'll be doing a bit more posting here.

Last weekend I was able to get out in Milwaukee and land 6 king salmon from my kayak.  A mighty thunderstorm in the morning and heavy overcast skies made for excellent conditions in the harbor.  An influx of fresh runoff coming from the discharge, combined with north winds pushing a good flow into the harbor made for a complex mud-line and mighty currents that whirled in some spots, and just flowed quickly in others.

Whenever I find a good mud-line in/around the harbor I always concentrate on fishing both sides of it heavily as I know bait fish and salmon like to move in and out of the wall of debris in the water.  Last weekend I found the line on the inside of McKinley pier, and began trolling patterns pulling crank baits.  My first fish came on a medium sized bleeding pearl Rapala Tail Dancer.  It came when I was letting line out on my other rod.  I hooked in, held on with one hand and quickly reeled in my second line with the other.  Once I had things together I began gaining line foot by foot, but the fish took several huge runs and started pulling the kayak to the south.  I was in the open harbor just on the south side of Veteran's Park and the fish had miles of open water to move in.  I started with about 50 feet of line out and must have had over 100 out when it took its first jump.  It was silver as they get and I thought it might be a huge brown despite the King like runs it was doing.

These were the first 2 kings of the day, the left, a 16 pound male, very silver. The right, a 15 pound female full of roe.  Still quite silver as well.

After a few more minutes of towing I finally tired it enough to get it boat side, got it on a stringer, and sat back in my seat for a minute, drifting slowly, with my adrenaline pumping.  For the whole time I had the fish on I thought, I can't believe I'm into my first King, this is what I've been waiting for, I hope I don't loose this beautiful thing.

I reset my lines and just 10 minutes later I hooked into a wild fighting, high jumping steelhead that threw the hook after 4 or 5 jumps.

From there on out the action was hot and heavy.  I switched to 2 white crank baits, and for the rest of the day I couldn't keep fish off of the full sized, deep running, wonder-bread reef runner. The pattern that worked the best was getting to full speed (around 2.5 miles an hour), holding that speed for a few minutes, then simply stop paddling except small dips to maintain a vector.  All my hits but one came as my lures (both slow, very wide wobbling lures that hold up at slow speeds) slowed to a crawl and probably started floating up in the water column.

This is another 15 pound female, this puts in scale how huge these fish are compared to the vessel I'm in.  Lots of fun.

I ended the day 6/9 fish landed, with about 8 more hits that shook the rod violently for a second but released before I could get the rod out of it's holder.

The lowlight of the day came when I was lifting a 15 pound female King Salmon out of the water, she slipped and buried a single hook of one of the trebles in my left index finger.  She was attached to me via the hook and thrashing away in the water.  Fortunately I was able to yank it loose (bending the hook about 10 degrees as it pulled from my own flesh).  Ouch.  Needles to say I made a trip to the cleaning station to fillet what I had and to clean out my wound.  I made friends with a fellow fisherman who was landing his boat and politely asked if he might spare a band-aid from a first aid kit in his boat (one of which I now have in my kayak for just such an accident.

In the morning after the rains I stopped by the discharge in the harbor and quickly hooked this beautiful walleye on a thunderstick.  It gave a good hit and I thought I had a Salmon for just a second.  But then, as walleyes usually do, she dragged in like a log and didn't give me much of a fight. Nice to catch such a healthy, fat walleye from Lake Michigan though! She was released right away, despite calls from some other fishermen near by to let them keep it.

South Eastern Wisconsin Kayak Fishing Report : September 11, 2010

After a long week of work and the fact that I would be up bright and early for work again on Sunday I loaded the car and readied the Kayak for another tour in Wisconsin Saturday afternoon.

I launched at a different spot this time, from the beach just north of the north arm of the Racine breakwater.  The kayak was easy to drag through the sand and I could load it next to the car and then pull it down to the water's edge.  The waves were 2-3 feet and rolling in the long gradual rise to the beach there in Racine, which made for a perfect spot to launch when waves would prevent launch on other beaches with steeper banks.  I paddled out through the break, keeping as dry as one can in a Kayak in 3 foot waves.  After the break the swell was very easy to handle and proved no challenge.  Water temperature was near 60 degrees at the beach and clicked down degree by degree as I headed east into the lake, finally resting at about 54 degrees.  I started marking fish almost immediately in 6 feet of water, and continued to mark fish all the way out to 30 feet of water, where marks started becoming less frequent.  Bait was not present in any large numbers but the sheer volume of large marks on the depth finder kept my hopes up.  I did about a 2 mile loop and after receiving a phone call I decided to head back to shore and meet friends further north.

As I neared the beach I decided to pull lines in 8 feet of water.  As I drifted with the waves I pulled a dipsy with a magnum spoon, as I was unhooking the snap swivel and stowing that rig my other rod started making a loud noise and bouncing in the rod holder.  I swiftly grabbed the rod and gave it a good hook set.  Fish on.  The fished thrashed on the surface, dove and took a strong run, jumped a few times, then calmly retreated to the side of my Kayak.  It was a beautiful female steelhead at around 8 pounds (I did not weigh or measure as I released it boatside).

She hit a J-13 while I drifted in the waves.  The lure must have been shallow and should have been making random dives as large waves lurched me forward.  It was a beautiful fish, and would be the only one I caught all day, though I did hook up once later at dusk at Oak Creek.

Oak creek is running strong and some fish have made it up the short run to the main pool under the falls.  I saw a pair of steelhead, a coho, and a nice jack king get pulled from the main pool while I was there, and I saw several gold colored kings pushing up through the turbulence.  I'm hoping conditions improve in the next week or two and we finally start to see large schools of Kings pushing to the harbor mouths.  It's been a slow start in terms of King Salmon and hopefully the ball will get rolling soon.

Lake Michigan Kayak Fishing Report : Salmon and Trout : September 5, 2010

Strong west winds and cool September nights have turned the lake over and has set the wisconsin harbors and river mouths in motion for shore fishermen, and small craft fishermen alike.  Water surface temperatures from the state line all the way up past Milwaukee range from 48 degrees to 53 degrees.  Water inside the Milwaukee harbor runs an average of 55 degrees as of Sunday.

My first time out this fall started at dawn on Sunday morning as I launched my newly fitted Kayak from the beach at the mouth of Pike Creek in Kenosha, where there was a colony of tents and shore fishermen hoping to tie into their first King of the fall.  I did a 2 mile loop, marking an occasional stray fish in the 15 foot deep range.   I kayaked out to 30 feet of water and hooked back to shore, as the other handful of boats out all pulled away one by one to deeper water where more fish could be found.  I wanted to get the Kayak in Milwaukee harbor where I knew more fish would be holding.

I launched from the rocks near the channel head light and set out in calm waters under a blue sky to the middle gap.  I was marking dozens of fish and bait clouds inside the wall of the harbor which dissapted after heading out of the main gap into the lake.  A freighter headed past and sounded its horn as it passed through the channel under the Hoan bridge.

Wind was steadily rising from the south and clouds were moving in.  I made a line to the North gap and began trolling counter clockwise circles through the gap.    At 1:45 p.m. I hooked and landed my first Kayak salmonid.  It was a small but beautiful brown trout.  It hit a Green Dolphin Magnum Stinger spoon behind a dipsy diver in 29 feet of water.   There was 30 feet of line on counter.   As winds had continued to rise I battled across the harbor to my launch point and pulled out and headed south to Racine to meet the crew I salmon fish with, I haven't seen them since the end of Steelhead season in the spring and was looking forward to catching up.  After arriving at the channel head and swapping fish stories from the summer I began casting a jig with a 5" gulp minnow.  A Steelhead had been landed by my friend Mike shortly before my arival.  Another friend Andrew, who runs the fishing website Fishing-Headquarters, which you should all check out, swiftly hooked a beautiful fall King Salmon at about 9 lbs.  After the sun set I hooked on a glow spoon (a 3/4 oz. Moonshine) and stuck the biggest Steelhead I've caught to date.  32" of chrome, beauty.

It was exactly how a start to the salmon season should go.  Just increadibly excited about the fall.  You can expect regular reports from here on out.

Perch, Year Classes in Lake Michigan, By the Numbers

As you will often hear from old timers next to you fishing for perch along the miles of shoreline on Lake Michigan, things aren't what they used to be.  The good old days died in the early nineties with mussels, alewifes, overfishing, and dwindling bait fish populations to name a few.  Here's a graph that not only tells you the state of fishing this year, but can be used to help predict years to come.

Lake Michigan Hits Eighty Degrees : One Away From All Time High Temperature

A buoy in the middle of Lake Michigan hit 80 degrees last week; the first time it's hit that mark since 2001.  The warmest it's ever been was in 1995, it hit 81 degrees.  Warm water means more plankton and faster growth rates for your favorite species of fish.  This may mean some big perch coming to the end of your line next year, and even bigger salmon and trout in the years to come as well.

Here's a great article from the Journal Sentinel that goes into greater depth about the matter.

A look at temperatures in our end of the lake.

Illinois Wisconsin Fishing Blog

A fellow emailed me this week and wanted to introduce me to his blog named Illinois Wisconsin Fishing, and now I'd like to extend the same gesture to you, I'll suggest you click here to visit the site and have a read for yourself.

As it turns out, fishermen make fish stories and, big surprise, we want to tell them.  That's how this little project started out for me.  Now I'm a few hundred posts deep and still look forward to punching keys after a good outing.  It even motivates me to get out sometimes, as I know I can't write about my adventures until I actually have them.  So as David (the Chicago Trout Bum) supports me and I him in our parallel quests to enjoy the aquatic gifts we've been given, I hope you support Illinois Wisconsin Fishing by having a read.  I'm going to start keeping my eye on the site, no question about that.

Northern Minnesota : July 2010

Each year I am lucky enough to spend a week or two at a cabin in Northern Minnesota with some wonderful scenery and world class fishing.  The lake the cabin sits on is full of large Walleye, mean Smallmouth, big Musky, and a good smattering of Largemouth Bass and Northern Pike.

Dusk falling away on the lake as my girlfriends father keeps us on a good line using the depth finder as a guide when a visual of the reeds falls away.  Nights spent under the inky sky of Northern Minnesota, quietly moving through the lake in a boat older than either man on board has become part of who I am.  I am one who appreciates water and sky and stars, but there is something exactly perfect about summer nights up there.

I spent the week of the 4th of July up there this year and spend every night trolling and casting break lines and reefs for Walleye and Smallmouth.  I was lucky enough to land a 22+" Smallmouth, a personal best of mine, adding to my other personal best this year (caught on memorial day weekend) 8 lb. walleye from the same lake.

The warm year has made our usual style of fishing the shallow break line less effective and we were forced to use new strategies to find the fish.  I welcome a challenge and it was fun learning some new water this year.

The Smallmouth, which hit an x-rap, trolled over a sloping boulder field.  I found that trolling a soft zig zag between slightly deeper and slightly shallower than the lure runs often results in good hits from big fish.

I also had a chance to play guide a couple nights, captaining one boat or another with two good comrades with me.  We had loads of fun and got some great fish in the boat.

 This is Chris, who recently returned from Iraq, it became my goal to get him a good Smallmouth, as he told me he has been having a Smallmouth dry spell and hadn't caught one in 4 years.  We got him a decent fish, followed by his personal best, pictured above.  Icing on the cake was him bagging a personal best walleye, unmeasured and released I would put it around 24" and somewhere around 3.5 pounds.  It was a great fish.

Here's Nick with a stringer of Walleye that fed the whole cabin dinner the next night.  That night was one of the few that we managed to identify a pattern and methodically filled a stringer with enough to feed the gang.

Another great part about the location of this cabin is that it is just a 15 minute drive from a small lake that is chalk full of nice Largemouth Bass and feisty Northern Pike.  Catching a dozen or more of each in a short morning is no where near unheard of.

Only accessible by canoe and kayak keeps the fish many and the shoulder room generous. Here is Rich with a northern on the line.  You can't beat the scenery here either.  It's as good as any post card you'll ever find.

Finally a nice largemouth being released kayak side.  A huge plus of fishing from a canoe or kayak is that boat-side release is done with ease, most fish never need leave the water to be released.

In short order I will be leaving for a week in the Upper Peninsula, where I will try my hand at trolling for lake trout.  Flashers, Dodgers, Flies, Spoons, and Body Baits are prepared, leaders are ready and rod holders are installed on our 16 foot aluminum.  It's been a great summer.

The Re-writing of Your Famous Fishing Hole or, The Great Milwaukee Flood of July 2009

Dear friends and followers, it has been long since I've posted anything.  My days are long and my nights short, time for fishing is scarce, and time for blogging is more rare even than fishing time.  Tonight, however, I find myself in South-Carolina after 13 hours on shoot, we're photographing a major bank headquarters in Charlotte NC this week.

Tonight I need to bring you some photographs (not mine unfortunately) of my beloved Milwaukee area.  Shorewood (where I spent 4 years of college) got 11.6 inches of rain yesterday and flooded out not only the Milwaukee river, but the streets, yards, and basements no doubt of many of my former streets and apartments.

First for the fishy stuff.  The Milwaukee River bursted its banks to over 16000 cfs.... I've never seen anything like that, not even in the mid-June flood of 2008.

Secondly my favorite tributary, Oak Creek, every year my gravel runs and boulder spots are a little different, I have a big feeling this year is going to be something extraordinarily different.

If you plan on hitting your spots for Skamania strain Steelhead anytime soon, I would highly recommend getting in a good scouting session as soon as the water gets low to figure out the new bends (or lack of bends) in the rivers.

Here are some photographs from various photographers in Milwaukee who submitted photographs to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and others.

This is at Oakland and Edgewood, just a few blocks from where I used to live.  When I lived in Milwaukee I would bike through this intersection with my salmon rod in my backpack to fish  the Milwaukee River. Thise are the tops of cars you are seeing in the foreground, that middle car is floating...

If I had my kayak in Milwaukee you know I would be out exploiting nature for some fun in the flood.

Finally, this is an image my friend Steph made in the UWM union parking garage.  I worked just behind where she is standing during the making of this photograph.

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I need to share some of my recent stories with the blog and I promise to soon.  Maybe tomorrow night I will have a bit of energy left in me.  Until then, nice to be back hitting some keys.

Tom

Milwaukee Area Steelhead Report : Early April 2010

As the days get longer and the water warms we must unfortunately bid farewell to what has been an amazing spring steelhead season, while there is still a couple weeks left of good fishing and possibly a week or so more of leftovers we have to be thankful that we had such a banner spring. I remember last year freezing my knuckles and bearing into the wind while trying to throw casts into stained, turbulent waters from a string of massive March rains. This year I broke sweat in my tee shirt more than once. I casted to clear pools swirling with silver, hard hitting fish while the sun rose and the air temperatures broke sixty before I could see my shadow finding its way along the stones by the river bed.

While large rivers are likely to be blown out by this string of vicious storms we had this week look for the small tributaries to pay dividends in the last late runner steelhead to make their short shots up into the rapids to spawn. Suckers should be mixed in now from every stream from the state line, well north of Milwaukee.

I have recently neglected to write about my fishing experience I had with two fine gentlemen who I have only recently had the privilege of knowing, and today I intend to share our story.. I took co-worker Scott and his son Ryan, who happens to be my age, up to Milwaukee for a day of river hopping and casting.

We started out at a spot that is secret to a friend or two that showed it to me; so to them I am bound not to divulge it's whereabouts, I will tell you its pools were packed with eager fish that dropped back to larger, deeper, darker pools as dawn turned into mid-morning. At first light I managed a lovely hen from an eddy behind a large boulder in a deep pool. I tightly swung leech is all it took to start the tango.

Ryan (left) and myself (right) with my first hen of the day. What a gorgeous fish.

Ryan (who I should mention casts like silk, Ryan is a trout fisherman and has never Steelhead fished before, or used an eight weight) proudly banked this mean looking male Steelhead from a small but deep pool near where I picked mine off. The fish fought hard and was bound and determined to put its nose into the opposite bank, as we were releasing this fish we thought it would be advantageous to the well being of the fish for me to assist in a quick net job. The fish posed kindly for a photo or two and took a dip into the rapids where it recovered quickly. Nice work Ryan.

Scott standing proud with Ryan and his first Steelhead, and its a large one to boot!

From that first spot we found ourself on the banks of the Menominee, where Scott tagged his first Steelhead ever, only to have it give the hook back to him after a few seconds of fight, many of us have danced that short dance before and I'm sure all of you out there can feel Scott's pain when he saw the mammoth trout spit the hook back in his direction after such a short fight.

Ryan and I, upstream of Scott found a pod of no less than two to three hundred suckers... It was like nothing I've ever seen so we edited our presentations for some fun in the sun with suckers, we rolled the smallest nymphs I had in my steelhead box along the bottom with split shot above to keep it below the downward facing mouths of the Suckers. we landed something like 13 of these 1-3 pound fish who I must say are a blast on the fly rod. They are hard fighting little monsters. All were of course released after a short fight.

From here we moved on to the big, hard flowing Milwaukee. I hooked what would be the biggest Steelhead of the day, a dime bright fish I would put somewhere near 12 pounds. It jumped no less than two feet out of the water in the huge run I was fighting her, when she jumped I saw my egg pattern zip out of her mouth and I nearly took it in the face, fortunately I ducked just in time and it flew by my head. Oh well. I promptly hooked and landed a disappointing sucker upstream and called my Milwaukee River experience finished.

From Milwaukee we took a ride down to Oak Creek where, to my surprise, we found very few people, and quite a few fish! I bagged a large, bright red with a nice green back, male fish who ran me all over 2 pools and the rapids in between before I unhooked him near the bank. He jumped 5 times, uncharacteristic of a spring steelhead, lots of fun. I later hooked a female who I lost after a minute or two. Finally at the end of the day while Ryan and I were working a pod of fish in a deeper, we hooked a female, brought her to the bank, she was loosing eggs as we unhooked her so we decided a photo was not as important as letting her get back to it.

All in all, 4 locations, all with at least one fish of one species or another landed by at least one angler. We fished for 12 hours straight and had some sun on our arms and faces to show for it. Not bad. Not bad at all.

I think I may have converted a couple of trout fisherman to Steelhead fishermen that day. Although I should use a different word than converted because they, as I, certainly enjoy a wily trout on the end of my line any day.

Great to fish with you guys, I can't wait to take you out for another day of Steelhead fishing in Wisconsin.