If you could handle the rough water this past week, you could catch some very nice salmon up to the 24 pound range. Almost every day produced some high seas and winds in the morning and then often diminishing by the late afternoon. Winds on Saturday shortened our all day charter to 5 hours and on Sunday we never did get out in the morning. The salmon are still in the 70 to 120 foot range with the best depth being 85 to 90 foot. There were some reports of nice catches of salmon in the 55 to 65 foot range, however we did not fish shallower than 75 foot of water. During the week we took salmon the weighed over 23 pounds and many lake trout over 14 pounds.
The best method continues to be divers with flashers and flies and 300 and 400 foot of copper with stingray and magnum stinger spoons. The best flashers remain the hot chip and pro chip (silver/green, mountain dew, silver and blue wiggle). The best flies are the Rapture oceana, blue bubble, wild fern and the speed weed. We also caught some large salmon "pulling meat" behind white glow flashes and glow Rapture teaser flies with Pro Troll glow and green bait holders. We did not do well with downrigger during the week however there were some boats that reported decent downrigger results pulling white/glow glades with green flies. The copper did produce a few salmon with magnum stingers and stingray lures, however we did not find any color combination that produced consistently. I did talk to anglers that stated that glow magnum spoons produced well for them when pulled behind copper and lead core lines
Our salmon should stay in this depth if we do not see any major change in water temperature. Feel free to contact me for further information or if you would like to make a charter reservation at captron@chartermichigan.com.