Another good week of fishing in Saugatuck. Catches of 15 to 30 fish per trip was very common last week. What really determined how many fish you caught was what they hit that day. If they hit more copper at 300 and 450 foot, it took longer to land the fish and when you slowed down to fight the fish, you really "stopped fishing" until you got your speed back. If the majority of the fish hit the downriggers and dipsy divers, you spent less time fishing the fish and got the lures back in action faster. The creel consisted of 2, 3 and 4 year old chinook salmon, coho salmon, lake trout, steelhead with an occasional brown trout.
Although some boats reported some success with stingray lures, the best method for us were flashers and flies which were run on copper, dipsy divers and downriggers. 200 foot, 300 foot and 450 foot copper with flashers and rapture flies produced very well. The dipsy divers at 200 and 300 foot and downriggers at 80, 90 and 100 foot produced very well. We had very good success with Singer E chip flashers (mixed veggie, chrome UV, super frog, white UV/glow, silver UV green) and Rapture flies (no see um with green beads, no see um with yellow beads, sour apple, green hypnotist and green dude). On certain days we had very good success with the 11 in echip (white glow UV, silver mountain dew and white double glow) on the downriggers, however they might work one day and not the next.
Next week might prove to be interesting. With strong winds and high waves the next two days, we may find cold water moving in and with that the salmon should move into the river. Yesterday when we ran a mid day charter, we marked what looked like salmon in 55 foot of water and saw a couple of salmon jump in front of the boat. For fishing information or charter reservations, email me at captron@chartermichigan.com.