Sk8man

Brian - Congrats on avoiding the much dreaded "skunk" Mark and I were not so lucky today. We arrived at Hughes to a relatively calm lake at 5AM after an hour ride and motored out to 230 ft to start the day. We set out 2 wire dipseys one with flasher fly and other with spinney fly and a 300 copper with a magnum spoon and three cheated downriggers. We had one release on the downrigger and it appeared like something didn't quite fully get ahold of the slider. Wer changed everything but the kitched sink until 2 PM without even the slightest touch and we never marked a solid fish and only one small pod of bait. Interestingly, we never marked even a laker on bottom despite fishing out to 560 ft of water and back into 120 ft. We managed to snag a large branch with the downrigger at the end of things and tangled up two wire dipseys and a downrigger so we had a little excitement anyway The bottom line is however a bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work

Nice going Andy

Some good tips here from knowledgeable folks. An important consideration is also knowing your target fish real well and their habits especially seasonally. As mentioned above salmon are pelagic fish meaning that they inhabit the upper layers of water (typically the open sea..remember although they have been "transplanted" to the Great Lakes they basically spend much of their lives in salt water in their native conditions) so they roam great areas in search of food. and because they are not bottom oriented the structure considerations that pertain to demersal fish (those living on or near bottom or near to shore) do not really apply. Breaks in temperature, bait distribution and availability are the main concerns and this largely determines their positioning in the water column as well as the areas they tend to roam. When in search of bait they may go way out of what is thought to be their "preferred temperature" and they may orient close to bait pods that are on or near bottom despite not truly being bottom oriented dwellers if actively feeding or the temperature is desirable in summer. In late summer as Fall approaches the feeding and temperature considerations pretty much go out the window for mature fish anyway. Their urge to feed is replaced by the one to reproduce and spawn so their roaming becomes more shore oriented and when they start homing in on their home streams and they are no longer actively feeding and may be "staging" near bottom off the mouths of streams. Now they they mainly hit lures out of aggression.so you shift your methods toward trying to irritate them with active lures and bright colors as contrasted with trying to lure them to bite out of a feeding response.

I forgot to add: Don't be reluctant to use Magnum sized spoons....here is what my son found inside the larger king: (It also suggests they are feeding on them over time because of the different levels of decomposition and maybe this late stage adult sized bait is all that is available out there?)

Hughes &-16-17 My son Mark and I left about 6 AM aboard the Admiral Byrd boat and the wind started to pick up as soon as we got outside the launch. We motored out to about 220 ft or so and dropped the 6 lines in and struggled to go against the wind for a while....nothing for the first hour or so. After awhile the wind changed direction and let up a bit . We took a couple kings and 2 steelies in the 200-260 ft range. Three fish off riggers set to 75-80- ft with medium spoons (eg. NK28"s) and one wire dipsey set to 250 with a black flasher and white homemade UV fly took a king. None of the fish were huge but respectable fish with one jumping 6 times before landing. Later on the fish wanted larger spoon and deeper (100 over 240 ft). Had two kings on that got off while Bob was having a couple senior moments and one of them jumped about 5 ft. in the air a couple hundred ft behind the boat. The fleas were light where we fished but when the sun got high and it warmed up the biting flies were terrible and I was thankful that I had anticipated it and wore long pants and shirt the whole time unlike my companions that were slapping them mercilessly. It also may have been one of the cases demonstrating "less is more" as we fished 3 rods on one side of the boat and 5 on the other and most fish came from the three rod side....Bob was convinced it had nothing to do with skill of the guys doing the rigging on the 3 rod side, but I felt it might be that "Les is more" in this case. Fun day although the late morning and afternoon was slow and was without fish. We marked very few fish and only one very small pod of bait. The marked fish were all at the 72-79 ft level and would not bite anything. A couple of fish pics Mark caught. Kept the pictured fish as they weren't thought to be able to recuperate (note the mess in the corner of the boat which gave Bob a chance to curse profusely while gloating about his new water washdown hose).

You have a PM

Geez I know ....that sure doesn't make my memory look so good