Door County Report

[lotalota]

We took a run over to Door County last week along with Nordquan1 and his new boat to put a little time on the water. It was a great trip, as usual. We arrived at Gill's Rock on Friday AM instead of Bailey's due to wind/waves on the main lake. We were in the 61 degree water by 0400 and around to the north of the peninsula well before sunrise. Lines down, waiting in the dark for the morning flurry and...nothing. No Flurry. A fish here and there but that was it. We moved from 100' to 40' and back out to 120' but got to action. The sun was well over Washington Island before the riggers started going. Once they started they stayed consistent until we ran out of energy and headed to shore to catch some late morning zzz's. We were back at it in the PM and found the same deal as in the morning. Consistent action from the start but no "witching hour" at dusk. Both Saturday and Sunday were the same deal. Intelligent fisherman (like OutdoorNut) slept in and hit the water a little later. Less intelligent fisherman (like us) insisted on getting in the water at 0400 so we could wait for the sun to come up. Why??? Because you never know I guess.

The fish on Friday wanted to be spoon fed. Most fish hit dipsys out 150' at 3.5 but we also had a lot of hits on the high riggers running down 35' and 65' off the ball. At Cheffrey's suggestion, I picked up a blue/black dot Needlenose and also picked up a green glow and red glow in the same Needlenose spoon. I wish I'd had more. The green Needlenose ruled the day taking over half of the fish in the box on day one. The blue NN accounted for several more. We also did well on a an unnamed blue dolphin spoon (wish I had the name. It was good and we lost both of the pair I had). Saturday we were back up at it out of Gill's. We started with the ending spread from Friday but ended up switching over to flashers by mid-morning. Top rigs were green or white E-chips in front of JR glow flies tied at 23" back and run on a full core. The new blue/glow Opti flasher did well too and the green and blue Needlenoses were still picking up fish off the riggers. We had 6 fish in the box at 0900, hit a pocket of fish and converted a quad plus two to make it 12 in the box by 0945. Sweet!!! We took a run out of Bailey's on Sunday AM bucking the swells the whole way down to last years waypoints. We took a tack down shallow water while Nordquan1 headed deep. We should have followed them out. We recorded our first skunk ever over there while they managed a number of nice fish out deep in the early morning. It was pretty rough by the time we called it off and headed to shore, humbled and tossed about.

It was good to see Outdoornut and his nice new rig as well as run into Harpoon. Good to see the FM boys holding their own out there. We all noticed that there were a lot of short strikes all weekend. We had at least as many releases as we did fish in the box. Probably more. The rod would pop up and there would be nothing there. Anybody else getting that this year? We had the same experience over the weekend of the 4th last month. We also lost A LOT of fish in the midst of the fight for no particular reason. We had a fish that had a 12" wide back right at the back of the boat. It hit a lead core, ran out to 900' and came back to the boat. Lots of tearing around and jumping. It came to the back of the boat and the hook just slipped out of it's mouth as it finned 2 feet out of net range. New hooks on all the spoons and everything but we lost a lot of fish. All the same, we came home 4 fish shy of a 6 man possesion limit and the freezer is well stocked for the grill and the smoker.

We're considering a trip over in late September/early October to chase around the 3 year olds that are still out there. Anybody ever try that?

Lota Lota...