Great Lakes Angler

I’ve done a LOT of fishing with spinners… both in-line and the kind with the skirts. For a long time I’ve liked roster tails for a couple of reasons, I like how you can run them deeper, making casting in lakes and deep holes a possibility, as well as that hackle pulse that seems to land fish.I do, however, like panther martins for their ability to keep spinning at such low speeds, I can hover this lure in the lightest of currents or in the slowest of retrievesAnother thing I enjoy about both of these spinners is something that makes them very different. The classic panther martin comes in very few colors, and to tell you the truth I rarely buy anything but the yellow with black dots or the black with yellow dots. I’ve tried one of the new iridescent hologram bladed ones and have landed a couple of little browns with it, but I’m not that crazy about it. Continue reading

Well, I can’t say I agree with everything in this article, I think that the great lakes is one of our nation’s most valuable resources and each and every head turned to it helps. This article from Eric Sharp is certainly worth a read. Continue reading

Well, we got what we asked for, west winds and warm weather. The sun came up today un-impeded by clouds. The weather was balmy and the air was still thick with moisture from the torrents we got over the last couple of days. I had high hopes as the sky got brighter and suddenly myself and the three fellows next to me hooked into perch. The bite was hot for 10 or 15 minutes, one after another for us all. I ended up tossing back some smaller ones along with the rest of the guys out there. Lots of perch in a short period of time, but smaller average today, a lot in the 9-10″ range.Perch are one of the more beautiful freshwater fish in my opinion. Continue reading

I got on the bike and headed out into the 90 degree heat and chicago traffic and battled my way to the sea wall. Once I got past wrigly field the temp began to drop, it was something like 15 degrees cooler on the sea wall. Continue reading

This fishing has slowed greatly. A combination of the coldest june on record, driving north-east winds for the last week, and no sun has slowed the bite to a crawl. The 12 or so guys on the wall couldn’t have combined their fish to make a 1 man limit in 3 hours of fishing Sunday Morning. The sunrise was fantastic and more than made up for the lack of perch. Continue reading

With only 2 days left in the season I arrived at my spot that now feels like home, and will be missed during the month of July. I set up in the dark and tossed my spinner far, I backed my braid with mono yesterday so it won’t slip on hook sets. Due to re-spooling the braid that first cast sailed to the horizon. Continue reading

I got out this morning extra early anticipating a great bite because of the hard west wind blowing yesterday. I arrived at 3:45 a.m. and set up next to a guy named Tommy, the only other angler there. We talked for around an hour without so much as a bite. As the sun started to rise we moved out to the lake from the harbor and immidiatly started getting fish. I only ended up with 2 decent sized perch. A friend of mine got 5 and some others got around 10. The fast action lasted something like 25 minutes. After that it was done for the rest of the morning. Continue reading

Well, tomorrow marks the passing of the first half of 2009. It’s time to total up my catch for the first part of the year. It’s been a great start to 2009 and I can only dream of catching as many quality fish as I did in the waxing part of this year. Continue reading

Some news from just across lake Michigan for you this afternoon. Earlier this week a man in Michigan snagged a 5-foot lake sturgeon, a photo from a bystander shows him with it on a blue stringer, he is also holding a large net. Continue reading

I got my 14″ jumbo this morning!! In fact, it was 14.5″. It was caught on the lake front using a double jig fishing tiny flukes.

I had a couple others come unbuttoned on the way in but nothing near the size of this one. I’m still learning the artificials but I’m making headway. I’ll be out there at the seawall again at 4:00 a.m.! Continue reading

Jumbo’s were practically jumping on stringers this morning, unfortunatly it was everone elses stringers… not mine. My tactics from Navy Pier in the dead of winter using crappie rigs and shrimp pieces is not working now. I just picked up some jig heads and artificials so tomorrow morning I’m going to try and repeat the performances of everyone else with limits of 12-14 inch fish. Continue reading

At long last, I had one of those days… One of those days on Lake Michigan that makes up for all those slow sunrises taking home a stringer with a single perch for two or three hours of fishing. I got to my normal spot today and decided to forgo fishing a double jig rig with artificials. I went straight to the super rooster tail (1/4 oz.) white with silver blade. I hooked some shrimp on the double hook and gave her a toss. A hit on the first cast but no take. The next three consecutive casts landed me three decent keepers, two of them being 12″. My hopes were starting to get high, but I have been tricked by a burst of perch in the first 10 minutes before and didn’t let them climb to any real height. Continue reading

Got out to the wall this morning at around 4:45. The bite turned on very strong around 5:15, lasted until just before 6:00. A couple of the gentleman to my south had easy limits, I had trouble getting on them for some reason, the smaller shad-raps they were using must have just been the ticket this morning. Continue reading

I couldn’t leave the lake alone… Not even for a day. I am craving a stringer full of jumbos, and I really wanted to try out the new rigs I tied up last night. I got to my favorite spot at around 4:15 in the afternoon, I only fished for an hour but it was pretty steady. Every 4 or 5 minutes someone would pull one in. I got a large rock bass which I released along with a few other small perch. I kept one 10 1/4″ perch which had a large emerald shiner in it’s stomach. Continue reading

Well, we all know it, every time we go outside, not even mentioning a trip to lake Michigan, we wonder to ourselves: is it really June? It certainly seems like the calendar this year went something like : February, March, April, May, April… Continue reading

So I took a stroll on my old fall salmon stomping grounds today, McKinley Pier in Milwaukee. Half way out, right at the bend I noticed something pretty remarkable on the harbor side of the wall. A tremendous floating island of refuse. Continue reading

While out at the harbor mouth today just north of Downtown Chicago targeting perch I ran into something unexpected.

Using a crappie rig with #6 Aberdeen hooks rigged with a small white tube jig on the bottom and raw shrimp on the top hook I started getting little nibbles. This instantly put me in a good mood as I thought I stumbled upon a school of perch first thing in the morning. The sun was just coming up and I was missing hook sets left and white. I wasn’t sure what was down there nibbling so I was eager to pull one up. Continue reading

Well I biked back out to the harbor yesterday and fished for perch, I needed to work on my technique with artificials. I hooked up with a nice 10″ perch almost right away. I then took a walk out to the lake side and began fishing in the waves. Continue reading

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at Kayak fishing for a while now, this Memorial Day weekend provided a great chance to do just that. I was at a lovely lake in Northern Minnesota which will remain un-named, one rainy, overcast afternoon I had the chance to throw the Kayak on the rack and take it to a nearby, smaller, and even more un-named lake. Continue reading

I stumbled upon a fly fishing magazine today via another site. You can view the whole magazine online 1 spread at a time. A lot of the type is pretty cool and all the photographs of big browns and rainbows makes me wish I had my own personal plane and a bottomless bank roll to fly around the world and trout fish.Go ahead and click on the photo and it will take you to This is Fly, you can check the magazine out there.

I made the trip to the wall this morning, I arrived at 4:45, still dark I began fishing inside the harbor to see if there was any action inside. I immidiatly starting getting light taps but couldn’t connect. After around 5 casts I made the walk out to the lake side. Continue reading

The driving north and east winds have slowed down perch fishing on the lake front. The bite has been getting earlier and earlier. A week ago, 5:30-6:15 a.m. was when the bite was on, it has slowly backed down to 4:15-5:00. This means the early bird gets the word, the really early bird. Continue reading

I arrived at the wall today around 4:30 a.m. there were a handful of others there upon my arival, not as many as yesterday, but still a few other early birds. I had high hopes once again, and today things were a little better than yesterday. As soon as that sun got near the horizon the bite turned on, and stayed on for something like 40 minutes. I landed the first fish out of the other men out there, but was soon put to shame by the guys fishing with softshells. Continue reading

Out to home base on the sea wall this morning by 4:40. I had some equipment malfunctions that were unexpected. My trusty super rooster tail actually snapped in half today, I guess after catching 3 Northerns and close to 60 Jumbo Perch on it the metal gets a little brittle. Continue reading

Today I’ll point you to the blog of a fellow angler and new friend of mine, David H.

Continue reading

In years past I’ve found myself walking smooth white sand along quiet beaches in spots that used to be where I might have body surfed in the spring. This year there is a different story.

A friend of mine and I have a beach we tenderly refer to as “the secret beach”, it is a place where I have never seen another foot print and it lies where garbage used to be poured into the lake in one fassion or another. We find sea glass, fishing plugs that find there way to shore, and other metalic oddities from the height of the factory days along the lake. Continue reading

Construction just began on a new lock to compliment the Poe Lock at the Soo Locks, connecting Lake Superior to Lake Huron. This new lock will make faster work of moving the 1000 foot class of freighter between the lakes. If anything were to happen to the Poe Lock it would “restrict 85 percent of our business,” said Fred Shusterich, president of Superior, Wis.-based Midwest Energy Resources Co.The Coffer Dams that re-route the river to allow work on the lock will cost $1.9 million. Around 8000 ships make the journey through the Locks each year and this high capacity lock will help keep things running smoothly, and will provide a backup for times that the Poe lock needs maintainence on it’s hydrolics or anything else. Continue reading

Trout, Trout, Trout…

I love them, I do. There isn’t much to say besides I got out as much as I could whether it meant only getting 3 hours of sleep so I could get it in, or taking a new trout fisherman on an hour drive to get him his first trout. Continue reading

Recently I was fishing a branch of the willow river in St. Croix County, Wisconsin. I was joined in my pursuit of a breakfast of fish by a kingfisher. He perched in the tree above my little hole and patiently waited. I had nearly forgotten about my like minded avian friend when suddenly… A cannonball dropped from the tree and entered the shallow riffles above the hole. Continue reading

The house past legislation last week approving $475 million towards resoring the Great Lakes. This, of course, is good news for all of us that have respect for our great lakes. I couldn’t ever see myself living far from its shores and every penny that gets routed into restoration, prevention, and research is a penny well spent in my book. Continue reading

After all was said and done today, in a short 2 hours 3 stringers had a combined total of 36 jumbos waiting to be filleted. I made it out with friends Mike and Keith, I got my limit of 15 by 6:30 this morning. They were willing to bite anything that swam today, shad raps preceded by bullet weights, flukes on jigs, paddlebugs, raw softshells, and my personal favorite, the spinner tipped with shrimp. Continue reading

Anglers from shore should have a good shot this weekend at some great jumbo perch action. Wind’s have been driving from the North East most of the week, making conditions lousy for perch.

It appears the winds of change are on their way though. Continue reading

A few weeks ago I reported that across the lake, in Grand Haven Michigan, a man was caught on camera taking a 5 foot long lake sturgeon which he had snagged in the tail, netted, and then dragged to his truck. Continue reading