We had another good week of fishing even with the rough water and storms that moved through during the week. With the exception of today, we have been taking 8 to 20 fish every trip. Today we fished from 9 to 2 and had a total of one fish on a 400 foot copper. I hope this is due to the fact that we fished in the middle of the day since as a rule the fishing is better in the early hours of the morning and slows as the light increases. This week we caught a number of chinook salmon in the 16 to 20 pound range, a 14 pound steelhead, a 13 pound lake trout and a fantastic 18 pound brown trout.
Flashers and flies continue to produce very well when pulled on downriggers, dipsy divers and 300 and 400 copper. The best flashers are the Pro Troll (silver/green, silver mountain dew, white blue wiggle, white glow and silver blue) with Rapture flies (no see um green, oceana, blue bird, wild fern, green hypnotist and purple no see um). We also had some good luck with Ace Hi plugs (silver red head, green lightning and blue lightning) and Stingray blue dolphin and Nitro lures producing some nice steelhead on 200 and 300 copper.
Perch fishing continues to be spotty with some reports of decent catches in 40 to 50 foot of water out of Holland and 60 to 70 foot of water out of South Haven and 40 foot of water off of Glenn. Again, it has been spotty with the perch being caught at one depth one day but gone the next. There are a few perch being caught in the rocks off the Douglas point, however it is hard to get the bait past the golbies.
The bait is still in the 40 to 60 foot depth and out in 140 to 160 foot depth, so I hope this will hold the salmon and trout in the area. For information or charter reservations, email me at captron@chartermichigan.com.