Perch Season 2009

Fished with Doug Sowa. Temperature this morning was 46 degrees and when we quit fishing it was in the middle 60s. The wind was out of the northeast 5 to 10 knots with waves less than a foot. The water temp is 70 degrees. Started fishing by the Toledo Light House on this side of the ditch and we never had to move. We caught a lot of fish and had to sort through them to keep what we did, but it made for a fun day of perch fishing. Kept 45 perch between 8 and 10 inches with most of them in the 8 inch range. We picked up our bait at Lake Erie Party Store and Joe had some nice shiners, which are now $3.50 per scoop.

2009 Salmon Fishing

Fished Manistee from 8-15 through 8-22 with Joe and John H. We also had captain Daryl's boat, the Lucky Strike with Dwayne and Mark. Captain John and his crew stayed at a different motel.

The weather made it one of the toughest salmon fishing trips that we have had for a long time. The wind was mostly out of the west at 10 to 25 knots almost every day. When we did get out, we fished south between the 1st set of nets and the second set of nets, in 140 to 200 feet of water.

The fish were very deep this year. We fished the downriggers anywhere between 95 and 130 feet down, running J-Plugs, cut bait rigs and spin doctors and flies. I only have 10 pound cannon balls and I should have had 14 pound cannon balls. It would have created less blow back and made for easier fishing - maybe next year I'll pick some up. Off the dipsy's we ran the spin doctor with glow squids and cut bait with hoochies or spin doctors back 250 and 300 feet. We kept 24 salmon for the week with the largest at 21 pounds. The average size was around 18 pounds.

Daryl must have caught a rogue net with his downriggers on Tuesday night so we had to tow him in about 4 miles. They had 3 downrigger cables break and some of the cable wrapped around the prop. They only lost the Wednesday morning fish because they had some great help getting everything replaced and put back together.

All in all, we all had a great time, excellent food at the restaurants, met some nice people and had a lot of laughs. Can't wait until next year's trip!

Salmon Fishing in Manistee

Well, Joe and John and I are off to Manistee, Michigan for our annual Salmon Fishing Trip! Will meet up with Daryl and Duane at the motel. Same place we stayed at last year. Looking forward to a busy and (hopefully productive) week of salmon fishing on Lake Michigan. Hope to have a few posts during the week, but if not, I'll post on Sunday, August 23.