chk555

See my post about fishing out of the Stony Creek boat launch on Wednesday, 02JUL25 that I posted on 03JUL25.

We started fishing at around 0600hrs. Marking plenty of fish between 95 and 115 feet of water. Fish marked near the surface be 35 and 45 feet deep. Used MAG Dipsey Divers on the number three setting for maximum spread set for 45 feet deep. We had Spin Doctor and Pro-Troll flashers with A-Tom-Mik flies and Michigan Stinger spoons. No hits. Then switched to Downriggers with the same. No hits. We changed colors, flashers and clean lines on downriggers with spoons only. A curious thing, we saw dead Alewife floating on the surface of the water all day. Anyone know why the Alewife are dying? We also marked some huge bait balls off of the bottom. We were in a 16 foot StarCraft boat, so we could not put out Dipseys and Downriggers at the same time with the waves at nearly 3ft because it was too risky for a tangling up. We used six-foot long 20lb fluorocarbon leaders from the Dipsey to the Flashers. 12 to eighteen-inch leaders from the flasher to the spoon or fly. My trolling speed was between 2.2 and 2.8 miles per hour. At 1000hrs, we switched to Cowbells with Laker Candy between 10 and 5 feet off of the bottom trolling for lake trout. We called it a day at 1100hrs. The sun was scorching; we didn’t take one fish, not even a hit. The waves were beating us up in the small craft from the time we started until about 1000, when the waves settled a bit to about one and a half to two feet. I tell you getting skunked like this is getting to cause me to lose a bit of confidence in my ability to catch salmon. I keep asking myself WWDKD? What would Dan Keating Do? Captain Dan Keating that is.