What is up with this years Fishing

[Steve Arend]

I have been fish Lake Michigan for 20+ years out of the St. Joseph Port and I can’t think of any other time where we’ve gone out before mid-May and have been able to box out on kings before boxing out on coho. We had about 4 weeks of good coho fishing from the last 2 weeks in March and the first 2 week in April and that was it. Now we’re running out to 100-160 ft. of water and boxing out on kings. This should not be for this time of year! Those kings should be in shallow following the alewives which should be hitting the rivers right now. I have not marked any bait balls in shallow everything has been out in 120 to 160 and sitting right on bottom. WHY? I have not caught a smelt yet this year. They normally start on the first turkey season.

Does anyone have an educated guess as to here the coho are? Why the kings are out deep? And where are the alewives?

[SalmonSlayer]

I'm seeing the same thing Steve, seems like after the winds of April 1st weekend, all the fish disappeared! The coho and brown normally running the shallows are not there! In fact, NOTHING is in shallow, not even baitfish. My last trip out before the Apr29 tourney we fished in shallow and didn't mark a thing, or hit a fish. We fished prime hours with prime baits that always work, and worked earlier in the year. Now there's not a fish to be found...could this have anything to do with all the dredging in the channel? Seems like they would still be around the shorelines. Even the guys fishing the nuke plant say there's not a lot of baitfish or coho around...sure, there were some, but not in the quantity that recent years have produced.

[CaptLevi]

Steve,

I would guess that a lot has to do with the seemingly constant East wind we have been getting. The water against the shoreline is quite cold compared to usual.

One thing you may have noticed. The Kings are taking high lines as well as lines set to 85'. Most of mine have been in the top 30'.

Last weekend we marked lots of baitfish in the 100' - 120' range.

So I guess I would think that it's just a fickle year and keep my fingers crossed that the sky isn't falling.

[EdB]

Had a probe down last weekend and it was 42 degree's down at 80 feet. 44 on top. I think that is a bit unusual for this time of year too, usually it is in the high 30's that deep now. Now the books say salmon like water temps in the mid 50's but I think the great lakes salmon have evolved to like colder water and 42 to 45 has been a great temp range to target for us. Outside of late summer, we find more fish in the 40's vs the 50's.

[Oakley]

We went out of Port Sheldon last weekend and the only place we found baitfish was in 20FOW just outside the second sand bar. They were stacked up in a very narrow band between 20FOW and 28FOW. If we went deeper the baitfish disappeared and if we went shallower and in between the sand bars, we marked very, very few. All this was south of the pier heads. We tried this same depth range north of the pier heads and found nothing.