Door County Report

[lotalota]

Just back from another successful weekend in Door County. We fished out of Bailey's Harbor on Friday and Saturday. We hit the water at 0330 on Friday morning. Couldn't figure out why we were the only boat at the ramp until we got around the point and ran into the big waves running down the lake. Not too much fun in the dark but what do you do besides drop lines and fish? No action until about 0530 at which point the deep lines running opti-dodgers lit up. The smoke/double aqua and green 50/50 /green glow were the ticket. We worked in 70'-90' with riggers 60'-73' down running at 2.4 mph GPS. Most fish hit on the down wind track (SW) so I'm assuming there was a considerable current down there (no speed/temp at the ball yet on the boat). Once the sun hit the water the focus shifted to dipsy lines run 150'-200' back in front of a black/silver carlson or a smoke/doube aqua. The bite shut down around 0900 so we did too. The evening run found us fiddling around with planers in shallow water to see what happened...not much. We got in a group of small kings and a few cohos and steelhead. Saturday was similar with a later start to the bite at 0600 (should have slept in). Same patterns as on Friday were the hot ones. I did get completely spooled by a fish that put a second degree burn on my thumb trying to shut it down. Wish I could have seen that one. We had to knock off early on Saturday as we filled the two guy limit early on. Gotta bring another guy along on these trips so we can fish all day. We were able to release a few of the smaller fish but I don't feel right putting the big boys back in the drink after the exhaustive fight they give. The seem just about spent by the time they are at the boat.

On Sunday we fished out of Marinette for a change in scenery and a try for a brown or two. We got a big zippo over there in a couple hours of fishing. Anybody have any hints on fishing over there? We talked with the guy at Howie Tackle in Sturgeon Bay and he suggested Peshtigo Point but it didn't do a thing for us. All the way down to Green Island we marked fish but turned up nothing. Did see one fish caught on a dodger/fly but nothing for us (except some really irritating tournament guys slow trolling inline boards right in our path and then about cutting my fixed board line off on the way to more fruitful waters).

On the topic of C&R...How do you guys handle this? I wish these things were a little more "releasable" so we could fish all day but can't toss many back in good conscience.

Lota Lota...

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Temerity
20' Seacraft CC
Duluth, MN

[SuddenlySummer]

We got into them pretty well out of Bailey's also. The first day were all 4 year olds. 9 were over 20lbs. We ended Saturday catching more 3year olds which we released. All the fish seemed to bolt straight down with no problem when released.

Had a blast!