Waukegan 5-14, 5-15, 5-16

After winds and storms pushed us off the water all of last week, we were finally able to get back out on Friday morning. Fishing remained excellent and we caught 18, 2 shy of our limit and concluded the morning with an adventure that entailed us having to circle a 16lb Chinook a number of times in a decent chop before finally getting it in the net a half-hour later!

Saturday morning we welcomed back familiar faces and put up a monster number of 33 fish in the cooler with another 2 that were let go!

Both mornings saw us do particularly well relative to other reports we had heard. Feeling good about that I was excited to get back on the water Sunday for our two trips we had scheduled in the morning and afternoon.

But what a difference we saw on Sunday and the big, blue water of Lake Michigan and its inhabitants have a funny way of saying "not so fast", just when you feel like you have figured some things out that others haven't.

We hooked into a 12lb Chinook for our first fish Sunday morning but experienced uneven action with a strange lack of a Coho bite. Reports from out deep as well as in shallow were equally as head-shaking and left us with little alternative other than to keep working what was available. In the end we arrived back in port with 8 fish. Not bad at all but it isn't 18 or 33. With similar reports coming in from other areas that were fished, I rolled the dice in search of higher numbers for our afternoon departure to check waters that have not been seen a boat in some time. It was a gamble that could have potentially paid huge dividends for both my crew that afternoon as well as earning myself some additional marvel to go along with Friday's and Saturday's relative outperformance. The downside...for sure the possibility of fishing totally dead water, void of fish, since no reports of anyone having been there in some time. So off I headed under 17 knots, nearly straight south. After lines were set and we slid into 38 feet, well south of Waukegan, we caught a Rainbow Trout and then a nice Chinook. A positive start but I was already edgy again as our Coho baits were not getting any attention. A little like our morning experience. I maneuvered us into a depth of 20 feet and we fought and netted another nice Chinook but where were the Coho? Not in shallow I learned after an hour in there so I set a course to get as deep as possible in as little time with baits still in the water. By the time we reached 47 feet of water into building seas, we began catching Coho. An hour later we had four more in the box and with a total of seven fish at this stage I was growing optimistic that we could potentially be hanging 12 or better fish on the rack since it was beginning to improve. However, with the building seas, a passenger that had bravely toughed it out for awhile yielded and we decided to pull lines and head in early.

So I suppose looking back, the gamble broke even as we got some action, got some fish, avoided the total loss but we did not find the motherload. Out here on this huge body of water 7 or 8 fish isn't bad at all but it was the dropoff in numbers from Friday and Saturday along with our relative outperformance that was a little humbling but that is fishing. I head back out with a really busy schedule over the next two weeks and some better news arrived in form of several reports from much deeper water later in the day which will serve as both an option and a reference for fishing this week. By experimenting and gambling on different areas to fish, we can also eliminate variables and territory as well as build new strategies as the season progresses.

In the meantime while we will still very much continue to catch Coho Salmon now, we have for sure noticed a larger than usual presence of Chinook Salmon this time of year. You may recall that we closed our season last year with limit catches of non-spawning Chinook Salmon. We took this as a sign that 2010 may be an excellent year for "Kings" and the larger than usual catches of them right now is giving that theory even more fuel. Some nice Lake Trout as well as several Rainbow Trout for every charter is rounding out a good variety.

The huge schools of Coho arrived early this year. Earlier than in many years. Big catches and near constant limits of Coho Salmon graced the deck of the Independence for about 6 weeks and gave us an outstanding start to the season. Perhaps in that same regard, the "Variety Time" - characteristic of June and July fishing - of still catching lots of Coho but also taking multiple as well as larger species, may also be coming early this year too. We have begun to outfit ourselves to capitalize on this variety as well.

Thanks for reading and thanks to the crews that have been out recently. Photos with date tags have been updated in the Gallery.

Capt Rick