Wednesday, we took a sightseeing ride out to Manitou Island Lighthouse and Gull Rock Lighthouse with a couple from Maryland. After this trip, they were going to Ontonagon to see the Fourteen Mile Point Lighthouse, then to Grand Marais, MN to make a circle around Isle Royale to see Rock of Ages Lighthouse, Passage Island Lighthouse, Menagerie Island and Rock Harbor Lighthouses.
We passed by a Coast Guard boat, the Lake Guardian, near Manitou Island.
You can see Manitou Island to the right and the Keweenaw Peninsula to the left of the boat.
Got a later start yesterday as I had to load and trailer the “Helm-n-Buoys” over to Eagle Harbor for a morning “exploratory” charter to check out the scum line.
The surface temperature was 61 in close and dropped slowly to about 55 as we got near the fishing grounds. As we fished, we saw 46 on the surface.
Our first fish was a steelhead, caught by postman Steve as he was holding a rod with a side planer dragging a black and hammered silver streak. The lure used to have a foil-white glow tape on the front, but as we pulled in the fish, I noticed it was missing the tape. We set it out again anyway and caught another steely on it later.
Also caught 2 nice lakers, one about 12 lbs the other smaller on a couple of other silver streak spoons. All were near the surface, only 10 feet down. Had dypsies running deep along with downriggers VERY deep but had no action on them, even though there were fish showing on the sonar at every level… even below 250 feet. Tried spoons and dodgers with spin and glows, but no luck down deep. I wish I could have measured the temp way down there, but my probe would not read that deep.
Brian Helminen
