Lake Michigan-Bailey's Harbor

[ReelTimes]

Well there have been lots of great reports from Algoma so thought I would share a disappointing report for us from Bailey's Harbor. We have had many great trips to Lake Mich over the years(always Algoma or Kewaunee) and this was by far the worst trip we have ever had to Lake Michigan. The #s of fish we caught were infrequent and inconsistent. We did talk to lots of folks at the launch and reports were fairly similar. Lots of boats coming in with 0-2 or 3 fish per outing seemed to be the norm. I did talk to one guy who did very well with meat rigs fishing bottom (he had 8). We actually were skunked on 2 of our outings. Not sure if it was something we were doing but as I said we didn't see anyone coming in with coolers full of fish (as is usually the norm). I will say this...we have typically used mostly downriggers or an occaisonal dipsy but I do think that we will be running leadcore next time we make the trip. Seems like the fish that were being taken were more often then not coming from leadcore. Perhaps Baileys is better later in the summer? Anyone have thoughts?

[evntam]

Yikes.

I've got reservations in BH for this week - Thurs. From what I've read, the fish are hot and heavy as far South as Milwaukee yet(that in and of itself got me concerned last week). I wonder if all the West winds have kept the surface temps and batifish further South - ie no reason to head north yet.

Sorry about your trip. Find any nets out there?

[ReelTimes]

I spoke to someone last night in Milwaukee who indicated that they did quite well this weekend down there. At Baileys, water temps on the surface were 61-63 and stayed consistently at that temp down to about 80 feet. Almost all boats were fishing in 70-100 feet with the fish being taken at 50-70 down or on bottom. I did go out and fish 150-200 feet depths (we were the only ones out there but had to try something) for 1/2 a day with the riggers set from 100-120 and had temps in the 47-50 range at the ball but never caught a fish out there. All the fish we caught were in closer to shore

[castmaster]

Some friends fished out of Baileys the weekend of the 14th & 15th and came home with their 40 fish limit. Said it was the best trip they've had in the past 5 years.

[ReelTimes]

That is interesting...glad they had a good trip. Makes me wonder if it was something we were doing (or not doing) although we used the same techniques that have been successful for us in other years. But again, I wasn't seeing much for fish numbers in others coolers either, so I don't know.

[castmaster]

I'll ask what set ups they were using and what depths.

[anordqu42]

I was up in Baileys this past weekend and did fairly well, but heard some were struggling. Talked to the Warden one night and he said half the boats he had checked in the AM were skunked. That night he had not found anyone with more than 4 fish. We boated 40 fish in 4 outings (2 AM/ 2 PM) with the PMs beings more productive (9 fish one night, 18 another). But on the night we had 18, I talked to guys that only had 2-4 fish. I think it was definitely the location/depth. Same as above, lots of fish caught in depths of 70-90, with dipsys being a top producer (160-200 back). Deep rigger did okay too. Pulled two full-core setups, but they were very quiet (not what I would have guessed, lead normally does very well). Probably caught 60% on spoons, 20% on flasher/fly, 20% on J-plugs. No one color stood out as we always had an assortment out. However, glow colors seemed to be a bit more active.

[evntam]

42:

That sounds good - I appreciate the post. We're now less than 48 hours from heading that way. Any idea of where the nets are there?

My thanks.

[OUTDOORNUT]

Ev,

You might want to give some of the Charters a call or even the Marina out of Baileys to see if they have any information on the nets. When we were out there in late June there were none.

[ReelTimes]

We did not see any nets when we were there.

[anordqu42]

I had looked around when I was out and did not see any. Let me know if you have anymore questions. My email is my username @aol.com.

[anordqu42]

Hey ReelTimes-

Just curious, did you run north or south when you went out?

[ReelTimes]

Anord...we mostly went north about 1-3 miles out of the bay. I think your comments about what others were catching were similar to us. We had a number of outings with 2-3 fish as well as a couple with 0. Its just that is very poor compared to how we have historically done during our trips. I have probably errored on the side of running too much on riggers and not enough on dipseys or leadcore. But that has worked for us in the past. I know you said you did not do as well on lead but several that I talked to were getting fish on lead and as I think about it, we did best on the dipseys that we did run. I will say that we did not graph near as many fish as we usually do (makes me wonder about overall fish numbers at that time) and we seemed to have a hard time getting the ones that were there to bite. So my take on it is maybe we should have run more stealth type techniques. Will probably try and make another trip in the next few weeks and plan to run a more diversified spread this time.

[anordqu42]

ReelTimes-

I completely understand with the full-cores. One guy that was with me (Lota Lota from the Duluth Forums) is so set on full-cores that he brought his own in case we wanted to run 3! And every 30 minutes you could here him say "dang, the lead is pretty quiet today". A couple weeks ago lead accounted for almost 60% of his fish. I think my total this trip was 3 out of 50+ releases (and that was 2 full cores and a half core)! Glad to hear others did well using it.

I hear you on graphing the fish. I felt too like I normally see more fish. We finally saw good numbers of fish when we found some big baitfish schools.

We'll be up in the BH area again late Aug (23rd-26th), so if you end up in that area around that time, let me know. It's always nice to have someone to compare notes with.

[ReelTimes]

Anord, we are still coordinating dates but will let you know if it is around that time. I think it may be at the end of August. We have never gone that late in August, so should be interesting.

[outdoor ran]

anordqu42, tell Scott to get his butt on here and say hi