Lake Michigan salmon fishing

Scott Hanson

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Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
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Summer time fun,King salmon fishing.
 
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I wish I was still driving out that way. I'd love to spend a day on the lake looking for fish like that.
 
Very nice! They're still running pretty hard in the st Mary's, was it a great year for you guys a lil south?
 
Spring coho run was awesome as usual but summer chinook bite was slower than usual and started to pick back up this fall.
 
Some pics of spring coho fishing that was awesome this year,seems if we have a cold winter we have better than average coho fishing in the spring.Some of my friends and I were out on a couple evenings in May and we got our 6 man limit each time out.

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120 quart cooler nearly full!
 
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Cool. I used to catch steel head and browns with roe bags in southern Ontario as a kid. I made my own bags with the red netting and I cured the egg skeins with Borax over night in the fridge to firm the eggs up. Jeez, that was a long time ago.
 
Cool. I used to catch steel head and browns with roe bags in southern Ontario as a kid. I made my own bags with the red netting and I cured the egg skeins with Borax over night in the fridge to firm the eggs up. Jeez, that was a long time ago.

Yep! Root River and Pikes Creek was where we all were in the fall back back a few years ago.
 
Root river ontario? I tent to only use spawn bags in rivers put a splitter to a 6-12" line with split shots then about 24" of line with a spawn bag on with a couple floaters tied in. Right to the bottum and the bag waves around in the current.

That's a very decent lookin cooler of fish :D do to guys smoke?
 
How heavy a rod are you guys using for those beasts? I'll be using this little Lamiglas and hope it will be up to the task.

 
Root river in Racine wisconsin,if we're fishing in deeper water closer to the mouth of the harbor we'll cast crank baits like Rattle traps, Rapalas, Brads baits and your standard assortment of spoons cleos, crocodiles cast masters brown trout spawn works the best down here with similar rigs to what your using.The spawn also works better as the become more mature.But like I say I like casting spoons and plugs early in the run.But now days I spend a lot more time trolling flutter spoons both standard and magnum size, J - plugs, and Rebel fast tracks.And no none of us smoke our own fish, there's usually 3 regular guys fishing on my boat so we save up about 50# or so an run it up to Port Washington to a place called Ewig brothers and have it commercially smoked . Although most of us do our own canning though, I don't think anyone around here offers canning services.
 
Sorry for duplicate post this was sent from my cell phone.
 
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Proturist,your 8-12# Lamiglas rod should work just fine with 12# line on it even for river fishing,I used to use 8-12# line when casting from the pier heads and into the harbor and I've seen guys guys catch them using 6# line however pier fishing is pretty much open water,if I'm fishing shallow rocky areas of the river I would go up to 17# test sometimes even on my lighter rods and I didn't have any problems with anything breaking.On my boat I use 30# Andy on all my rods most of those are 15-25# rating not so much because I need the extra strength line but the larger diameter line keeps the spiny water fleas off my line.Andy pink 30# is called flea flicker for that reason but it's the diameter of the line and not the color that keeps the fleas off your line.My lead cores all have 20# leaders tied on to them,I use 50# power pro and 30# braided wire on my dipsey rods the braids and wires are much smaller in diameter than the mono but they saw through the spiny water fleas ( spiny water fleas have like a cotton wood texture to them and don't come off of mono easily ).The other reason I like heavier line is I do a lot of night fishing and heavier line is way more forgiving than light line, because shit is way more likely to go wrong at night than during day time.For what it's worth I also like Andy line and use a Palamer knot to connect my swivels,the Palamer knot usually holds 100% of the knot strength.I hope this helps.

I forgot to mention we usually catch our biggest Kings at night!!
 
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Great info. Thanks, I'm sure I'll be referring to it often.
 
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