Home Forums Fishing Freshwater A King thing.

I officially have a King thing. A thing for King salmon, that is.

I've always had to go out on other's boats, or fish for them from the piers when they make their fall spawn run, but after buying a couple diver rods last week and venturing out solo on Lake Michigan in my 17 footer last Saturday and scoring, I'm completely infected. It wasn't a monster, but it was my first solo salmon and proof that I can find them and catch them, something I've never done on my own before.

What a rush!

That's really cool. That's a great salmon. Think of all the days you caught zero salmon. Thanks for sharing.

Awesome! I haven't fished the Great Lakes in a long time. Looks like those trips are over. Enjoy.

Dang bro that’s sweet!!!

This is one of the things I love about fishing… being presented with a challenge, playing with it like a puzzle in my head, and then solving!

Great work Scott that’s super cool

How deep did you have that spoon?

That is great! Hooked on another time and money investment adventure is always great.
Seriously tho, way to go!

Osky

I usually use a delta diver, 2 feet of 50# mono to a shortbus triangle flasher, and 48” inches of 40# mono to a double snell of 3/0 big river hooks, a herring helmet, and a green label herring. Killer setup!

Very nice! And you're right, it can be addictive! I'm between Algoma and Sturgeon Bay and it's busy out on the lake right now. One of our productive rigs is a lot of copper out behind the boat with a variety of different spoons. Besides being fun to catch, they eat pretty good too! Enjoy!

Thanks, guys. The wind didn't cooperate over the weekend. I got lines set Saturday morning for less than 5 minutes before common sense told me to get back to shore.

Hoping to go out this evening in Petoskey. It's really heating up there.

Some good friends used to have a place by Petoskey, but I never got out on that side of the lake. Good luck and enjoy!

Rippa Scott !!!

Nuthin like new addictions !

Looks good to me!!

Good old wonder bread!
I fish solo a lot have it dialed in and some times prefer it
Here's a double I caught and landed solo

Hats off to you, David. That had to be a wild time.

Dude that’s so cool

Hella rodeo

Is it a secret?

Oh, sorry. I was in 45-50 FOW and the spoon was within 5-8 feet of bottom.

We go out to the "bank" about 5 miles out from Sturgeon Bay. That puts us in about 175' to 200' of water. Our most productive set up is off of a Tekota 700 or 800 series reel on a Telora wire rod (I like Shimano stuff). The reel is spooled with backing, 300' of copper line, and about a 25' to 30' mono leader tipped with whatever spoon seams to be the ticket at that time. Let it all out into the backing, attach a board, and let it out some more. Puts it way behind the boat and trolling at 2.3 to maybe 3 mph ends up around 50' to 60' down (according to printed info about the size copper we use). We catch a lot of fish with this and it's a winch retrieval for sure with bigger fish, but I sure like it! My good friend, who owns my favorite boat (sold mine), was out by himself the other day and went 5/5 on some nice Kings, no doubles though.

I've posted this pic before, it's from last year. A nice 25 pounder out on the "bank" using the set-up described.

I fished solo yesterday off shore 17 miles cant count how many fish I landed north of 30 easily 15 were between 16 and 20lbs
Was fishing in a 3 week tournament and needed to weight in 7 fish I needed 2 more to complete my box. Just couldn't find any jumbo kings yesterday
I left the slip at 5:30 am and returned at 5:30pm a long day solo. I managed a 19.60 and 19.62 lb fish to close my box for a 7 fish total weight of 151.46lbs and a 21.64 lb average hopefully that gets me a 2nd place finish as 1st place leader is 159.62 he got a 25lb and a 27 lb fish I just couldn't find a big kicker fish my largest was 24.34 lbs
Small craft and 10' waves today and tomorrow, Sunday looks fishable but sloppy so I opted to weight in those 2 yesterday other than me and the leader no one has more than 5 fish weighed in

Looking good, Dan !

That's a hell of a 7 fish box.

I'm intrigued by the idea of a 3 week tournament. Around here they're never more than 3 days, and some are only a few hours with a 2 PM weight-in. Keep us posted on where you place.

Windy here, too. Wife and I are dinking around the Upper Peninsula for a sort of anniversary trip. The wind would have made it impossible to fish, so I'm not missing much there.

They do a lot of weed and grass cutting in the shipping channel around Sturgeon Bay and do a really crappy job of collecting their cuttings. Every once in a while, 5 miles out, there'll be a huge ball of the chopped weeds and grass and you scramble to get lines clear of it. Would be interesting to see if there's any dodgers and flies, spoons, plugs, whatever, caught up in them.

Dean, you write about fishing "The bank" and there has to be a ton of stuff broken off down there. Lots of guys set too deep and don't watch the graph and hang up on that reef. We usually fished out of Kewaunee in my buddy's charter boat, but our best ever fishing was trolling the warm water discharge from those two nuclear plants south of there in our little boats after work. That was years ago before they commercially netted the alewife forage base fish and those bait fish were there for the warmer water and the big salmon were there too.

I took 2nd place in the tournament
$265 in tackle and $2880 cash prizes

Heck yeah! Congratulations!

Congrats well done.mb

Nicely done, congrats!

Well done, Dan !!

Sorry, I called you David. Got some wires crossed in my graying head.

Just wait! Lol! It only gets better!

I'm not sure whether to post this on a King salmon thread, or the strange catches one, but since I was after kings, I guess I'll post it here.

My buddy and I were on my boat last evening in Little Traverse Bay, in front of Petoskey, trolling for kings. There was a LOT of competition. Boats trolling everywhere, including a few bigger charters, who typically ignore the rules of the water and push smaller boats off the prime areas. It is what it is, I guess.

Anyway, no kings, even though we marked +75 fish that were almost certainly salmon, but we didn't get skunked thanks to a pretty fair laker that took my fly. 30" and 10 lbs. The meat on these fish has improved dramatically in recent years with their change from eating mostly alewives to other forage like gobies and cisco. This one had nice, orange meat, so the tail section of each filled will go on the grill and the thicker meat will head to the smoker along with some salmon and steelhead I have set aside.

30" and 10 lbs.

Took my boss out over the weekend. He had just bought a few rod/reel setups for copper wire, so he was happy to get out and get them wet. We launched from Harbor Springs before dawn and had the area almost completely to ourselves with only 1 other boat around. Nice!

We had just got the 4th line out when one of his rods was hit. About 15-20 minutes later, I awkwardly got the net under a 19 pound female king. Trying to get a fish within net range when using long rods in a small boat is a PITA.😀

We hoped that boating a fish right off the bat was a sign of what was to come, but nope, it was a 1 fish morning.

That's great, keep after them. Isn't it about now when king fishing really starts picking up?

Yep, and for us, it's about the only time of year for us to catch salmon because they don't really come into the bay here until spawning time.

What kind of boat do you have? I bought a Crestliner 1850 Fish hawk with a tiller and want to go out some time, although I am more interested in fishing the Bay of Green Bay . I live in SE WIs. and it is only 33 miles to Lake Michigan , so it is not a big deal.

My boat is a 1991 Sea Nymph, 17' center console with a 1992 Mariner 90 2-smoke. I wish it was bigger, but it gets me out on the water. It's fairly deep, especially for an older boat. Gunnel to chine measures around 26-28" and it handles +2' waves just fine, but when they build much bigger, I'm going in.

What kind of boat do you have? I bought a Crestliner 1850 Fish hawk with a tiller and want to go out some time, although I am more interested in fishing the Bay of Green Bay . I live in SE WIs. and it is only 33 miles to Lake Michigan , so it is not a big deal.[/q


ihookem, not a "King Thing", but get out in Miwaukee Harbor in the spring for Browns. They catch some very impressive ones there in not very deep water.

Been doing okay in NE WI for Kings lately, but already talking about next year though! Lol! Ferry to Washington Island, leave the truck/trailer there and power up to Rock Island and camp/fish from there (no motorized vehicles on Rock Island).

bruinruin, what is your bosses copper set up? One of my favorite methods...

He just bought 8 Penn reels and 4 Okuma rods. So far he has spooled up 2 reels with 150' copper, 30# mono leaders and 65lb PP backing. Another 2 are spooled the same, but with 200' copper. It was a 150' rig that fooled the king Saturday morning.

Personally, I still just have the 2 dipsy setups I bought a month ago, but am working on getting a couple manual downriggers mounted on my boat. I'd prefer electrics, but I'm ea$ing into this very expensive hobby.

I second your suggestion on chasing Browns on the Wisconsin side of the lake. Never done it myself, but I hear that fishery is top notch, and have seen the results on video and in a 27 pounder caugjt by a builder I work with.

A 27 lb brown???

Dude what a freak of nature!

Yep. This guy is a pretty big outdoorsman. Trips to Alaska for moose; just got back from a Minnesota muskie trip; mounts scattered around the house.

He has the brown mounted and it looks like a big laker that was painted wrong. Massive fish. Caught through the ice, too.

I've caught some nice Browns, never anything approaching that! Former co-worker hits Milwaukee Harbor right after ice-out and has caught some serious Browns.

Last year, a fishing charter out of Algoma, brought in a King that was just over 40 pounds! I have a picture somewhere, I'll try to find it.

I spool up 300' of copper on a Shimano Tekota 700 or 800. Puts the lure way back there and can sure be a "winch" to bring one in. Lately, the copper is outfishing the dipsey's and the downriggers combined.

I've been thinking about adding a copper setup or 2, but this time of year it's a damned rodeo on the fishing grounds. Last time out there were around 15 boats, all trying to fish the same shelf. It's not uncommon for another boat to cut your gear off, especially when you have hundreds of feet out.

Been in that! Lol! This past KD Salmon Tournament (Kewaunee/Door Counties) I've never seen so many boats in one spot! Horns honking, guys yelling and swearing, sets being boated over... just incredible! Looked at my buddy Jon, and said "this is supposed to be recreation? Right?" Recreation can sure bring out the worst in people...

My buddy and I took went out and joined the rodeo this evening. After the first pass with boats all around, and not marking anything, we decided to move to the eastern edge of the usual goat fugg and follow another shelf that doesn't get quite as much traffic as the main shelf. It turned out to be a good decision.

My deeper rod popped and a fight commenced. A really good sized female king came to the surface about 120 feet back and jumped a few times, then went deep. She gained around 200 feet of line on me and I couldn't do much more than hold on. Unfortunately, the line on that reel had dug into the layers of line beneath, meaning that the fish couldn't take line. The hook ended up pulling free on what my buddy, a long-time salmon fisherman, figured to be a 25-30 pounder.

I quickly got that line back in and we passed back over the same area, and once again, the same rod was hit. This time a 15 pound female came to the net. Redemption!

Another pass saw my second rod get bit, and a fiesty 15 lb male was boated a few minutes later. Heckuva an evening of fishing and with good company.

Looks like a great evening.

Very nice bruinruin!

They are addicting. My wife and I did our first trip for them in July and it was a blast. At that time 70-75% of our fish came on riggers with the others on divers fished with braid. The fish we caught were down 75 to about 100 feet. Leadcore was dead for us, most likely due to depth.

My son is starting to get into fishing for them heavily and bought 2 copper outfits earlier this summer for right around $200 fully rigged. Okuma Convector reels with Okuma rods. One with 300 feet of copper (or steel can't remember) and one with 400. He just told me that he purchased a third a week or so ago with 300 feet for less than $200. Same outfit different shop. May be able to get a few outfits for lesser money now that the season is winding down.

Man that looks like an awful lotta fun Scott; nice work!

Well, the fishing has been slow the last 2-3 weeks due to flip-flopping water temps and the fact that it's geting late in the salmon season, but we scored last evening with 3 good sized males in about 30 minutes time. It was pretty chaotic, but fun as hell.

Weights and measurements are compliments of the DNR Creel Counter person who happened to be at the ramp when we returned.

We're going to try to duplicate it again this evening and hopefully again on Friday evening. I'm definitely going to owe my wife a nice evening out after this week.😀

Very nice!

While we're a little more than a stone throw away from each other, I might have spooked those over your way the other day! Lol!

If you did, I appreciate it. The west wind over Labor day weekend really screwed up the temps here and the fish disappeared. Charters were canceling trips as recently as last week. My fishing buddy, who was with me last evening, went on a charter with a reputable captain just last Thursday and after covering about 15-20 miles of water, could only scrounge up 1 laker and zero salmon.

If you sent fish north, we all owe you one.😁

Way to go, Dan. Congrats!