April-end - Fishing is Heating Up

With a very successful April now in the book, I look forward into May and the unofficial start of the coho salmon season. We've been getting plenty of coho already however for the past 10 days or so.

It's been an excellent April for the most part. The month began with solid catches of lake and brown trout mixed in with some coho salmon. The mild temps over the first half of the month, sped up the spawning timeline of the browns. And it wasn't long untilan increase in water temps culminated in an inflection point to where the browns spawned and needed to rest, the lake trout scattered and went slightly deeper and our schools of baitfish (alewives) arrived near shore. The coho were not far behind the baitfish and all of this happened over the course of a few days.

Our catch has turned into primarily coho salmon at this stage, as it almost always does at the beginning of May. We will still have the chance to catch other species such as king salmon, steelhead, lake trout and brown trout, but the coho are what's in season. And they will remain in season for the foreseeable future; into June. We hope a long way into June as that has happened in seasons in the past.

Coho season is characterized by big hauls of a lot fish. Coho run 2-5lbs this time of year and are also quickly putting on weight as the feed heavily on schools of baitfish. The action is often very fast and fun and the limits are common. On top of all of that, most people agree that coho are the best salmon for the dinner table too. There's nothing like wild-caught coho salmon. This southwest corner of Lake Michigan offers some of the best coho salmon fishing anywhere in the world, next to Alaska, where coho are native.

Thanks for Reading,
Capt Rick