Another good week of fishing in Saugatuck. Catches of 15 to 30 fish per trip was very common last week. What really determined how many fish you caught was what they hit that day. If they hit more copper at 300 and 450 foot, it took longer to land the fish and when you slowed down to fight the fish, you really "stopped fishing" until you got your speed back. If the majority of the fish hit the downriggers and dipsy divers, you spent less time fishing the fish and got the lures back in action faster. The creel consisted of 2, 3 and 4 year old chinook salmon, coho salmon, lake trout, steelhead with an occasional brown trout.
 
Although some boats reported some success with stingray lures, the best method for us were flashers and flies which were run on copper, dipsy divers and downriggers. 200 foot, 300 foot and 450 foot copper with flashers and rapture flies produced very well. The dipsy divers at 200 and 300 foot and downriggers at 80, 90 and 100 foot produced very well. We had very good success with Singer E chip & Dreamweaver flashers (mixed veggie, chrome UV, super frog, white UV/glow, silver UV green) and Rapture flies (no see um with green beads, no see um with yellow beads, sour apple, green hypnotist and green dude). On certain days we had very good success with the 11 in echip (white glow UV, silver mountain dew and white double glow) on the downriggers, however they might work one day
and not the next.
 
Next week might prove to be interesting. With strong winds and high waves the next two days, we may find cold water moving in and with that the salmon should move into the river. Yesterday when we ran a mid day charter, we marked what looked like salmon in 55 foot of water and saw a couple of salmon jump in front of the boat.

Salmon fishing off Saugatuck was as good as it could get this past week. Catches of 12-20 fish everyday, a limit catch of 30 on Saturday. The creel was dominated by kings 8-26 pounds with some adult coho (up to 14#), lake trout, steelhead, and even a brown trout in the mix. Best fishing was from 130 FOW to 175 FOW.

During the week fish ranged from 40-110 feet down, and came on downriggers, copper, and wire divers. The vast majority of fish came on Dreamweaver flasher/Rapture & Howie fly combinations. The best combo were: 8” mixed veggies w/ a sour apple, 8” chrome w/ a hypnotist, 8” superfrog w/ a wild fern, 8” green glow w/ a wild fern, 8” chrome mt. dew/UV w/ a speed weed or no-see-um, 8” Davey Jones glow w/ a speed weed or green-no-see-um. In addition we had success with Dreamweaver 11” white double crushed glow w/ a hypnotist, Dreamweaver 11” green UV frog w/ a first wish, and a Dreamweaver 11” chrome mt. dew w/ a hypnotist.

Tremendous amounts of bait fish promise that fishing should continue to be excellent. Some of the adult kings are beginning to darken for the spawning run. It should be a great end of summer fishery.

We found out this past week that we are not use to fighting salmon after weeks of lake trout fights. Getting 6 to 10 salmon and steelhead hits on a trip resulted in 1 to 4 silver fish in the creel with copper breaking or fish just being lost because of the drag being to tight or too much slack in the line. We have gotten lazy fighting the trout. The catch was still good with 10 to 20 fish per trip, however the lake trout numbers still dominated the catch.

The silver fish are coming on the 150, 200 and 300 copper with orange crush, green dolphin and sunburst stingrays. They are also hitting the high divers at 150 and 180 foot with white slick glow E chip, silver UV mountain dew E chip and davey jones E chip with a rapture no see um fly with yellow beads. The lake trout continue to come on gold star dodgers (silver and yellow) with white, yellow and green spin n glows and rapture green hypnotist flies.

Perch fishing has been fair to excellent, depending on your location. Limit catches are being reported from 10 miles south of the Saugatuck piers to just south of the Douglas Point in 25 to 40 foot of water. Decent catches of perch were also reported from the Holland piers to south of Castle Park in 30 to 40 foot of water. I saw one catch today (from south of the point) that consisted of over 100 perch with the smallest being 9 in and the largest pushing 14 in.

Port: Saugatuck MI

Another beautiful day out on lake Michigan we headed out on another adventure looking for the fish and man did we ever find them. We caught 13 fish today we started at 6am and fished till 10:45am. I set up in about 95 feet of water and used my tin cans and spin and glows again. I bumped the bottom with those and caught my lake trout with those and i only had 1 copper go today which was strange because usually they go alot more on sunny days but that 250 feet of copper had a northport nailer on it. My divers were going on the high wire divers at 180 feet back set on 3 and my low wire divers were going at 125 feet back I had stingers on all of those. We ended the day with a total of 2 salmon 1 steelhead and 10 lake trout. The best picture I saw on the graph was between 90 and 100 anything outside of a 100 feet the picture went blank.
Fair Winds and Following Seas Until Next Time!!!
Captain Matt DeWitt <>< <>< <><


Port: Saugatuck MI

Another interesting week of fishing out of Saugatuck. Early in the week we fished 80 to 90 foot of water with good catches of Lake Trout and a couple of Chinook Salmon. Water temperature was 41 degrees on the bottom and bait suspended in 65 to 70 foot of water. Wednesday the bottom water temperature increase to 51 degrees and after the blow on Thursday the bottom temperature was 61 degrees. On Saturday the temperature was back in the low 50's and we went back to pounding the bottom in 90 to 100 foot of water. Saturday we took 12 fish, 10 legal Lake Trout, 1 18 in. Lake Trout and one 13 pound Chinook Salmon.
 
The best methods included metal (silver and white) flashers with the green hypnotist Rapture Fly and spin and glows on the downriggers pounding bottom. The Salmon were caught a little higher in the water column on the dipsy diver at 150 and 180 foot of line out with blue wiggle and silver mountain dew Hot Chip flasher and the Rapture blue bubble fly. We also had some action on the 450 coppers with a silver blue Hot Chip Flasher and Rapture mirage fly, however the 95% of the activity was on the downriggers and and dipsy divers.
 
On Saturday we ventured out to 160 foot of water and the bait was unbelievable suspended out in this water. It was so thick that it would error out the graph for 100 feet or more. There were fish marked and caught out in this water, however, most of the action was in the 90 to 100 foot depth. With all the bait off shore, I have to believe that the salmon are going to find them and then it should get interesting.
Captain Ron Westrate <>< <>< <><

Fishing off of Saugatuck was good to excellent over the weekend. Very nice catches 15+ fish on Friday with a lot of action, then a little slower on Saturday. Early in the week the fish averaged 12 pounds, however by the weekend the fish ran a 7 to 10 pounds average. Same place, same depth, same lures, just a different age class of fish.

Fish were in 110-180 FOW, and were caught 20-60 feet down. 100, 200, and 300 copper lines were the best with stinger and sting ray spoons.
Stingers and sting rays were also producing on the downriggers 30-60 feet down, and on the divers 150 and 100 feet with wire. Best spoons:
mixed veggies, jager bomb, blue modified dolphin, green dolphin, caramel dolphin, orange crush (on silver or gold), and the lemon-ice. Very little action on flashers and flies.