Got a slow start on Wednesday morning and finally got on the waters of Bete Grise with the Harbercraft with a party of 3. Steve, Nat and Janice, from Washington state had a small window of opportunity to fish and called me on Tuesday and we were able to go out on Wednesday with decent weather.
Janice had never been on a lake that she could not see both sides at the same time, so Lake Superior fishing was a new experience for her.
The wind was a little challenging, especially steering into it, but Janice was willing and able to take over so I could monitor the lines more closely. She seemed to enjoy the job and did it well.
There was no fish directly out from the bluff like there was a week ago, but we did manage to find some a little farther down the shore between Smith’s Fisheries and the mouth of the Montreal River.
The first one was a nice Steelhead caught on a dypsy diver about 35 feet below the surface with a black and pink silver streak. We also landed 2 lakers, one a laker taker and the other on a gold, orange and black silver streak. Empty stomachs on 2, but one had a 7 inch smelt.
Again, we lost 3 or 4 fish, 2 of which were all the way up to the surface and ready to scoop with the net. We would have stayed out longer, but I had an obligation. (OK, so it was a weak excuse… I had to attend a 3 pm meeting in Houghton, which I was 10 minutes late for. I should have skipped it and ruffled some feathers. Lucky there were no cops out, cause they could have nailed me for doing 75 on my way to Houghton)
On Wednesday night, I tried to get a few guys interested in fishing on Thursday, but only had one taker. I got all kinds of excuses, none of them legitimate of course, but it doesn’t pay to go into the details of them. Suffice it to say, they lacked the strong desire, because if they made it a priority all other things could wait 😉
Ken J. and I fished out of the South Entry after launching at White City, near Jacobsville. We trolled along the channel side of the pier for a couple hours after picking up a Coho almost right away. Had a couple more on, but not good enough hook sets. We also trolled around the end of the pier, towards the shore and got a nice hit on a planer board. Ken took this one in and fought it for a few minutes and we thought it was a fat lazy laker, because of the lack of a good fight. When it came to the surface 50 feet behind the boat, Ken said it looks like a big pike mouth. Sure enough, it was a 32 inch pike as you can see in the picture.
After circling around inside the channel again a few more times, we pulled the lines and most of our lures had weeds on them… should have been checking them more often and we would have caught more fish.
There were fish showing on the sonar quite a lot all along the pier, but were picking up weeds and not attracting the fish.
We then went out to deep water, about 3.5 miles out to try for lake trout. Neither of us had fished out here before, so not knowing where to go, we fumbled around for a while and picked up only one small laker the did not even trip the release on the downrigger. Water was a little bumpy out there, but not bad enough to make anyone sick.
WE both had a good time fishing and visiting and catching fish and learned a little about the waters of South Entry. Next time will be more productive. This time we ended up with 1 laker, 1 Coho and 1 northern pike.
Brian Helminen
