steeliebob

It should be looking good in a couple of weeks if we can rely on the forecast. For the next two weeks nighttime temps are supposed to be 20 degrees or colder. I will have long poles out this weekend then it will be time to put them away.

It is nice to hear that you are getting some salmon back even if they are cohos. I did not put a single laker in the boat this year. I even tried to get them a couple of times and could not. I was really hitting the kings good until the boat died and had to resort to surf fishing for them. Looking for a new boat now.

If you want to or get to come up to the UP look me up. From May to Sept I am on the Straits salmon fishing. Oct to May I am steelhead fishing your pick. Perhaps my favorite is ice fishing for steelhead

I never really put too much emphasis on temps and depth. I really put the effort on the time that you were on the water. When I put the boat in at 3:00 am I would use double glow spoons 30 feet down and 30 feet behind the ball in 60 to 80 fow. From 4:00 to 6:00 am you could not keep the salmon off of your lines. Most of the time I just ran two rods on the riggers. I had more doubles and triples when I ran three lines. then I ever had before. I ran the temp a few times on other boats ant it always was about 52 degrees. Being that I was alone in the boat I lost more fish than I caught but it was fun having releases and not dragging balls. Next year it will be hard to fish evenings.

If I lived in Munising I would have about a dozen rental shacks out on the ice and would offer guided trips

Still have the long poles for one more weekend. It may be pretty good this weekend for chrome ones. The forecast says cold next week and if it hangs in there I will be walking on water by Saturday 12/11. There are a couple of places that freeze good and pretty fast I only have to get a few feet off from shore so that is good. I am not giving up on the long poles just yet. A few years back I limited out on big steelhead every day for the first 10 days of December all big fish.

I did manage to get out there a couple of times despite the high winds and rough weather. No luck though, mabey I can get out once more before things start to freeze up. It looks like in a couple of weeks I can be ice fishing.

Snow & Cold just hit the EUP. Guess that the time to put away the long ploes has arrived

I thought L Huron was clear, I will bet you can see down about 30 feet there.

I go boat shopping every day without fail on the craigslist. That or I look at L Huron in front of my office wishing that I was out there in my boat.

With the next 4 days off I will travel to some of my hot steelhead spots and fish. I am going on a steelhead rod bender. Looks like the rivers will ice up soon and I would like to get one more weekend in before that happens. I do have the ice fishing gear standing by in case I don't make it through the weekend. Mabey by the first part of December I will either be deer hunting or standing on the hard water.

I hope that you bought the frog tog neopremes, I have put them through some tough testing in all weather and I love them

Next year when I pull a skunk I will remember that all of the fish are in your cooler. A nice well rounded bunch of fish. I don't keep track that close but my numbers have been about the same the last three years. I really added fish in July and August when I started going out at 3:00 in the am. I could not get a fish in the box in the evenings so I changed stratagies. It is so nice to be the only boat at the launch site. I caught a 25 pound king in July the biggest in 4 years, so they are getting bigger.

Nice Job!!!! Those are some awesome bucks and season is not over yet. I saw one wolf and one coyote in my usual hunting area not even a deer sign so I guess that I am glad that I chose to go fishing instead.

I bought a boat to get away from all of the in laws and out laws...family and want to be family. When I get home from work hooking up the boat is automatic.

Mabey the days of the mighty Chinook are numbered. Personally I would much rather have an atlantic salmon fillet on my plate. Tastey tastey.

The southern half of L Huron has few if any good salmon spawning rivers unlike L Michigan which is loaded with good spawning rivers. The northern half of L Huron was dotted with weirs on the most reproductive waters. When the DNR allowed the weirs to go in I told some of my fishing partners that they were going to kill the salmon fishing. The one guy all but gave me his boat a couple of years ago. Give it another five years and the Atlantic Salmon will probably move further south on the Huron side. This will probably be what Lake Huron needs. It scares me to think that if these get a threshhold that the DNR will go back to catching them in weirs and selling them for cat food.

We caught the Chinooks that looked like pike here in St Ignace about 8 years ago. The last few years they have been pretty healthy looking but they eat sticklebacks, smelt, whitefish, and a few walleyes and shad never an alewife. I believe that they can adapt. The weirs took alot of spawners out of Lake Huron and all but killed any hope for natural reproduction. Any DNR biologist will tell you that chinook do not spawn naturally, but they do and their success is higher than most would think. The pink salmon and atlantics have done super and thrived by natural reproduction. If the atlantics would thrive throughout L Huron you would probably have a better fisherie.

Did all of the Lake Huron Salmon go to Lake Michigan or is that a DNR myth. Apparently there is a lack of food for the salmon in Lake Huron according to the DNR. Yet walleyes, Steelhead,and Lake Trout are thriving and getting fat in Lake Huron. Could it be that the salmon weirs took too many salmon and killed off the spawners? Combine this with the VHS and it is a recipie for disaster. The DNR lowered the plants for a few years. You wipe out a natural population of fish and quit planting the hatchery fish, what do you expect will happen. Now that there is hundreds of charter boats on Lake Michigan do you try to rebuild L Huron at the expense of the L Michigan fishery?

I never worry about it when the boat hibernates. Why? There is plenty of good river fishing to be done for steelhead. Then in the UP we have at least 4 months of ICE, Yes Ice Fishing. I am already out picking my spots to set the tip ups up for Steelhead. If I could ice fish for steelhead year around I would never have a boat.

Michigan needs to focus on rebuilding fish stock in areas that have been hit the hardest like L Huron. The DNR really screwed up when they put salmon weirs up everywhere along L Huron. Their biologists think that salmon do not reproduce naturally. They killed off the natural reproducing stock which are healthier fish and quit planting fish when the VHS hit. Thus the salmon population in L Huron took a serious nosedive. Then the logical explaination for the DNR is to say that all of the salmon swam over to Lake Michigan.

Hey no skunk in the boat. I do the same thing with salmon in the summer. I will go out at 5:00 in the evening set a downrigger. Before I can even think about setting the second rigger the pole is up and bouncing. Then you burn gas for three hours watching poles.

These are the type for surf/shore fishing. I don't know what the brand name is but they are 3/8 inch steel rod holders. When you stick them in the ground they are planted pretty good. I have had decent 20+ pound salmon and 10+ pound steelhead try their luck at pulling them out of the ground. They do not budge, the pole gets a hell of a bend in it and the drag screams like a canary in the cats mouth. It just adds to the excitement

After losing a good rod to a salmon a couple of years ago. Rod reel everything hit the water and took off. I went out and invested in good rod holders, the heavy duty kind that you can plant two feet into the ground. This is why. When I was pulling lines this morning, I was reeling one line in and the other pole took off. It was doubled over in the rod holder and the steelhead was screaming on the drag. The hook was already set all I had to do was wrestle the rod out of the holder and fight the fish. The rod holder did not budge so it did its job. After about 20 minutes I landed a nice 12 pound steelhead. I love these rod holders