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9:59 pm
October 12, 2009
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fiveweight
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| Member | posts 38 | |
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Since I went with a few of you guys up to the Wisconsin tribs a few years ago, I was wondering if any of you had been back since then? I was up at an Indiana trib similar to those streams a couple weeks ago and saw some salmon in a deep section, but no takers. I've made several trips up there over the years but it's tough to get them to bite, no question about it. This will be my first time up (hopefully) during a salmon run and there are kings and coho plus steel. I expect the water will be muddy and nasty and crowded as hell this time, but I'm pretty determined to prove my insanity by doing the same thing – fishing with a fly rod – over and over probably with the same result which is about a fish for every five trips. I am fishing for some tips as far as flies to use – sizes, how much flash, etc. The pacific flies are pretty much a different set from what guys up here use, and to be honest most everyone uses bait anyway so it's hard to find info. One of the things it took me a long time to realize was how to find fish and I've got that down pretty good – move around a lot from spot to spot looking for gravel and time your trips after a rain when fish push in. Also, I'm not going to throw flies in the winter any more because that seems to be generally thought of as futile. So the timing is probably right, but I still just don't know what to throw. For steel up there, I've had fish turn and follow or hit various streamers but no single fly enough to establish a color pattern and nothing that seems to work consistently on any day either. The salmon I always hear prefer certain colors but again depending on the source it's always different, and that info is usually for streams in other areas or clearer water. Anyway, thought I'd check to see if anyone has been back up and had any success in the past few years and might be willing to share some tips.
Thanks
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6:13 am
October 13, 2009
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MattTucker
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Mike:
I guess I have been up to Wisconsin on 3 different trips to try and catch the elusive salmon / steelheald / lake run brown. Of the three trips, we only caught 1 lake run brown and we did "hook" some salmon. But here is my issue with Wisconsin salmon fishing — I truly believe that those fish do not actively chase flies 95% of the time. The last trip, Tim Biesendorfer, Brent McClane, and Todd Butzlaff got up there ahead of Brent Hinds, Craig Peterson, and I and they did some checking with the local fly shops and all of the local fly shops said that salmon fishing is largely a form of snagging where you line the fish in the mouth. They also indicated that catching in the lake before they get to that stage is entirely possible — but once in the stream, your chances dimenish greatly. All that being said, a TON of people go to wisconsin to fly fish for them. I can also say that in my 3 trips up there (albeit that is not much for any "real" experience) I have never seen a salmon chase down a streamer or actively move to take a nymph. As a matter of fact, we spent our last trip up there fishing the lake around Kenosha Harbor at the big browns that swin around near there. That was a site, to see those huge fish there. I will probably end up going back to WI to give it another shot at some point, but have heard from many that the salmon fishing / steelhead fishing in Michigan is a completely different animal and the fish actively chase on that side of the lake (i think it was explained to me about the species they stock and how they stock them….but not entirely sure).
–Matt Tucker
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9:13 am
October 13, 2009
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fiveweight
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| Member | posts 38 | |
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Post edited 2:19 pm – October 13, 2009 by fiveweight
Thanks for the response Matt, I didn't realize you guys had been back. I know what you mean about snagging. That's why I don't like to use that bottom bouncing double egg rig. I think it's hard to say for sure but I wouldn't like knowing it was probably a lined fish I caught if I did land one that way. It takes some of the fun out of it. The 95% rule is probably right, but believe me if there was any good trout stream around here that's where I'd be so this is just the next best thing for a day trip so I'll take my chances on those 5%.
The one and only salmon I've ever caught was with you guys that trip and it did turn to chase my streamer many times before it got hooked. I don't know if you remember but on the Root right before we left you were fishing into an undercut bank about 2' deep and all of us were walking by on the opposite side when MP was giving you some pointers about your approach? You were tossing a glowball. That exact spot you were casting to was where I had landed it earlier. It was a really small male coho about 2-3 lbs behind a female on gravel – probably just in fight mode because it kept charging my fly every time it swung by and would follow it five or six feet back then turn back up. There may have even been more than one male back there because I thought I saw a slightly larger fish chase it a couple of those times. After a while, it payed less attention and would only do this every third or fourth cast so it took a while but it finally got hooked on one of those charges. I wouldn't call it feeding even though it was hooked on the inside of the jaw, that doesn't make any sense because their digestive system is disolving at that point but it wasn't exactly snagging or lining either. Other than that one fish, every rogue salmon I've come across during steelhead trips has ignored everything I've thrown. Still, I can see why in-line spinners are so popular with the spin fishermen if they can get agression strikes from time to time.
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11:33 am
October 15, 2009
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fiveweight
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| Member | posts 38 | |
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Well I went up again yesterday. I chickened out with the fly rod and decided to throw in-line spinners to cover water quickly and since the water was still warm enough that as I have been told the fish are more active. There were a lot of fish around. All the fish I was able to see clearly enough to cast to wanted nothing to do with my offering. I did catch one skamania steelhead (they are easily distinguished from the other strain by their long skinny proportions) from behind a log. It wasn't visible but it came out three times to hit my lure and took it down the third time. There was no question that was a legitimate strike. In that murky water I'm not sure it would have hit a fly. This was early in the morning. I saw a lot of steelhead the rest of the day but no other takers. It was 26.5" long, female and chrome with eggs. Not much of a fight honestly. Skamania are usually known for being great fighters and jumping a lot so I was a bit dissappointed.
I had one other fish on. While casting over a deep pool downstream to a shallow chute where two salmon were ignoring every color and size spinner I threw, I was pulling a small gold aglia back just under the surface close to my feet. A big red coho came up from the murky hole below. It followed my spinner for about three feet from behind and then opened its mouth and hit right in front of me. I had a great view of the strike. I think to anyone else who would have been there to see the take there would be no doubt in their mind it hit my lure with some intention. The fish rolled, pulled out some line and made a couple short runs. I thought it was under control when it found a second gear and accelerated so quickly upstream it snapped my line. This was a big fish, at least ten pounds and the craziest bright red color covering its whole body.
I fished for a few more hours, casting to a bunch of fish and good looking spots but nothing else showed the slightest bit of interest the rest of the day. I do sort of regret not having used my fly rod because this would have been the tirp to do it, but those spinners were pretty fun to work. I also do have a little more confidence that you can get them to strike, but not much more because out of the thirty or so fish I saw I only had those two strikes and that's way more fish than I've ever seen on one trip up there.
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12:25 pm
October 20, 2009
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Gavin
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Sounds like your having fun…Havent done the great lakes thing in awhile, but I thought I'd share my two best salmon flies…should work for steelhead too.
#1 is a Sparkleminnow…usually in size two…works best in slack or slow water on a floating line..Black, White, Pink, or Purple with pink bead, or whatever color is hot up there. Kinda like a wooly bugger but its profile is a lot different in the water…More of a baitfish or tube jig type look to it when the Angle hair body slims down in the water. Should be able to find the pattern online.
#2 is a Tom Hargrove's string leach pattern..Black, Purple, or Pink..it only works well in current and its best fished on a sink tip…A Teeny 250 or 300 is usually my choice, but you may want to cut the heads back a bit to make for easier roll cast pickups.
Recipe..
Salmon hook, mount some big heavy eye balls on the front underside of the hook.
Secure a loop of 30lb or stronger braided line to the hook shank. It should extend about 1.5-2" past the end of the hook shank.
Dub the body with some sparkly stuff, tie in two long rabbit strips on top of the hook, add a couple silicone rubber legs extending out either side, dub the head, tie off, and cement.
Clip the salmon hook off at the end of the shank and smooth it out with a file.
Cut the two rabbit strips to length…The fly should be about 4" long..or longer..
Loop on a Gamakatsu Octopus Stinger hook…size 2 or 4 or whatever you like.
Cheers.
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12:09 pm
October 21, 2009
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fiveweight
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| Member | posts 38 | |
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Thanks for the tip Gavin. I'll try out that sparkleminnow for sure. Swinging a sink tip on the Indiana tribs might be tough, they are at most the size of the Little Piney and just get smaller from there. That string leech could probably work from a floating line in shallow water though. And these streams are always muddy even when the water is low. Do you have any color advice for muddy cold water this winter?
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7:17 pm
October 21, 2009
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Gavin
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| New Member | posts 14 | |
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The sparkleminnow works everywhere, for anything….
Tom's leach will work on a floater, but it really needs a good current to work well.
Colors….cant help you there…what works, works. You will have to figure it out, start with what your confident in right now…add and delete stuff as needed…
I do have some general ideas abou color though…Color isnt all that important, except when it is…I'd rank it right behind presentation, size, or profile….but if they cant see it they cant eat it…
Things to consider…
- How do you think the fish see your fly? Many variables…How are you presenting your fly, location or presumed location of fish. Water clarity, position of the sun… What is background between your fly and the fish?
-Choose a color that blends in against the background (clear water), or provides a high contrast against the background (muddy or clear), or match a hatch (clear water)..or throw something completely silly and different.
Play with above and have fun! Cheers.
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9:45 pm
October 21, 2009
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fiveweight
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| Member | posts 38 | |
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Post edited 2:50 am – October 22, 2009 by fiveweight
That sounds like good general advice for any situation, any specie. I'll keep that in mind. I have never been very good at color selecting. I usually gravitate toward white/black/silver and occasionally try other colors. This goes for streamers (smallies, trout, whatever) and spinning gear too. If "other colors" are the key, with rare exception the experience usually becomes more about enjoying being outdoors which is a typically unstated way of saying the fishing sucks. My smallie box is full of white and gray clousers and my tackle box is full of white rooster tails and silver/black crankbaits. When those don't work I usually have a hard time finding the next best thing. If I were to write my own rules based on past experiences for selecting colors based on conditions for any type of fishing it would look something like this:
In clear water, catch lots of fish with minnow-imitating neutrals. In muddy water, it doesn't seem to matter what you use, you're screwed.
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1:00 pm
October 22, 2009
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Fred
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| New Member | posts 4 | |
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First time poster here.
After just getting back from a very successful salmon excursion in MI, I felt that I should post what worked for us.
First after not ever having fished WI for either salmon or steelies, I can say that Matt is dead on about MI salmon. They are a different breed and will attack what you toss at them. They're very aggressive and are dead set on chasing just about everything they can to "have their space". So they're not taking the fly because they're hungry, but because you've pounded the hole long enough to piss them off and make them take your fly.
I got up there on the Pere Marquette (Baldwin, MI –> local fly shop http://www.pmlodge.com/ and check out their river report link) and the guide running the desk told us for salmon we need to use a sharp hook (haha, thanks) and for steelhead to use a light colored egg pattern (chartruese and pink).
We ran 20lb leaders and 12lb tippets. Weighted at the leader loop with a split shot weight and threw tandum, a big dark attractor (egg sucking leeches, stone flies worked well) and then tailed off with a chartruese egg (14-16 size hook mostly). Even though I caught my first one with a stone fly, I was surprised to find that most of the salmon throughout the weekend took the egg pattern.
I'll try to post Monday with some pictures. But if anyone decides to go for a salmon run next year, I highly recommend the no kill section of the Pere Marquette. It's a real beautiful river and the town of Baldwin is a really nice place. The drive to Grand Rapids is ~480 miles from St. Peters and then tack on another 100 to Baldwin. I should try fishing WI since I have alot of family there, but the PM is a beautiful river. ARG!!! I wish my pictures were ready.
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9:15 am
October 27, 2009
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Fred
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| New Member | posts 4 | |
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Here's those pictures I promised. I'm the one in the picture titled "1stSalmon". The other 2 guys are brothers that live up there (used to live here in the St. Louis area).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/2…..550072537/
Once I figure out where I can put the pictures to insert them, I'll do that.
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9:15 am
October 27, 2009
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Fred
| | St. Peters | |
| New Member | posts 4 | |
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Here's those pictures I promised. I'm the one in the picture titled "1stSalmon". The other 2 guys are brothers that live up there (used to live here in the St. Louis area).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/2…..550072537/
Once I figure out where I can put the pictures to insert them, I'll do that.
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9:48 am
October 27, 2009
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MattTucker
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Fred:
You should be able to click on the photo in Flickr, and then it will open up a static link to that photo. If you then rigt click with your mouse on the photo and select properties, you should then highlight the address/url of the image (normally ends in .jpg). You can use this to post your image inside of your post:
Then you can keep typing and insert another image below that one after your text is done.
And finish your post.
Hope this helps. AND NICE SALMON.
–Matt Tucker
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10:08 am
October 27, 2009
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Fred
| | St. Peters | |
| New Member | posts 4 | |
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Thanks for the help Matt. Unfortunately those two ugly mugs are my friends, here's my fish (and yes I know it's smaller) 
I am looking to make this excursion an annual thing around the 2nd or 3rd week in October.
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11:13 pm
October 27, 2009
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fiveweight
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| Member | posts 38 | |
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Those are some huge ass freaking kings. It looks like my in-laws will be moving to some suburb of Detroit. My wife won't have to twist my arm to visit them (can we say "base camp"?).
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12:08 am
November 20, 2009
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fiveweight
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| Member | posts 38 | |
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Hey Matt, here's one good reason I recently found that you shouldn't completely give up on fishing for steelhead and salmon. This guy is based in Indiana and fishes southern lake michigan tribs, probably mostly the same ones I visit. He isn't fly fishing, but you can see the fish strike plain as day.
http://smg.photobucket.com/alb…..titled.flv
Now, the fact that some of those salmon fight like ass is a different story.
Maybe when I get a bit better at it and learn the "local" water more than I do I'll invite you guys to come out to this side of Chi-town and give it one more shot.
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