April 29,2023
We departed at 6am and set up south of the Whaleback in Good Harbor Bay in about 30 feet of water. The goal for the morning was to run body baits and small spoons off the planer boards looking for Brown Trout. After a few hours with nothing to show for our efforts, we decided to look for some Lake Trout. We moved and set up a couple downriggers and leadcore lines just northeast of Shalda Creek in about 90 feet of water and marked a couple fish. We searched heading west until we got to Pyramid Point without marking a lot of fish and no bites. We picked up the lines and headed back to the Whaleback but started trolling north. We started in 30 feet of water and headed north. We looked in depths between 30-90 feet of water and still could not find a school of fish. As we continued north, we followed a ridge line that was in about 50 feet of water. After a bit we noticed a black midge hatch was happening and the Humminbird Apex lit up with bait fish. Just seconds later we had our first fish on the downrigger. We were running a 2 color leadcore, a long line straight behind the boat using a Church’s stern planer with a Yeck double orange slick glow pattern. Neither of these two sets ups took any fish. We had a 4 color leadcore line off the part side with a 10” BTI chrome fish flasher with pink luminous spin-n-glow, this set up took 3 fish. On the port downrigger with had a #5 Hammerhead Lake Trout Killer cowbell with a pearl clown glow wings spin-n-glow. This took 7 hits, 6 fish and we had to return one of these. On the starboard downrigger we had a 10’ Green Bikini Dreamweaver Spin Doctor with white/pink luminous spot spin-n-glow. This set up had 6 hits, 5 fish and we had to return one of these as well. We set the lines about 75 feet behind the downrigger ball and 45 feet below the surface.
All the fish we caught were Lake Trout. We had 16 hits landed 12 and released 2 behind the boat. All this action was in about 2 hours after we found the fish. A great start to the 2023 season. Thanks to James, Jim, Matt, Bill, James, and AJ for a great trip.
