There Are Still Salmon In The Harbor

I took a trip down to the lake wednesday with my little girl.  She had the greatest time terrorizing the geese.

 

 

 

After she tired of chasing geese, we started for the car.  As we were walking back, an angler that we had spoken to briefly about the day's lack of action was setting the hook.  He reeled in a two foot chinook that fought valiantly.  Five minutes later, he was reeling in the coho pictured below.  The bite turned on as the clouds rolled in.

 

 

My little girl didn't want to leave after this because she loves looking at fish.  We stuck around for a while, watched half a dozen or so missed hook sets, and saw one other chinook come ashore by a second angler.  Finally, we left for the car, but as we were driving by on our way out, I saw one of these guys scramble for the net again.  Pretty good day, I'd say.

The Milwaukee Harbor Is Full Of Fish

I drove down to the lake today to kill some time on my day off.  As I walked along the water in Veteran's park, I saw numerous brown trout very close to shore.  I walked back to my car, drove a little ways, assembled my fly rod, and grabbed some "reserve" flies that happened to be in my car.  I walked to Mckinley Marina and started roll casting off the rocks.  It probably wasn't 20 minutes before I was hooked up with a fish.

It took me around five minutes to land the fish.  Not the biggest brown trout I've ever caught, but not a bad catch for a 30 minute outing.

Rough Fish On The Menomonee, Patience On The Milwaukee

I went out fishing on the Menomonee yesterday upstream from the concrete.  The restorations are happening and I don't want to get too in the way.  My little girl and I threw some little spoons for creek chub just to kill some time.  We caught many chub, and a few really pretty sunfish.

This was a monster of a chub

same fish as above.  I think it probaby
came in around 9 inches.

A pretty cool trilobite fossil

This morning we went to the Milwaukee River.  We were on the water just after 9:00am.  The fishing started really slowly.  The water is low, the weeds are thick, and there was no feeding.  We walked downstream a long ways and only landed one fish, one other got away.

Then at approximately 11:20, they just turned on.  I hooked and lost a fish, then on the next cast, I caught a beautiful bass.

Next cast, my jig hits the water, and there is a fish on as soon as I flip the bail.  That fish throws the hook, and another fish grabs the jig! Then that fish throws the hook.  Finally, a third fish slams into it!  As the fish tires and comes in, I can see the bass surrounded by no less than three other bass that are biting at the jig in his mouth!  The fish isn't even acting like he's trying to get away from me, he's fleeing from other fish!  This was my nicest fish of the day.

I caught many smallmouth after this, but most were less than ten inches.  It sure was fun though.

It's crazy how they can just switch on like that so quickly.  I literally went from having two fish on in hundreds of casts to having five fish on in three casts.  That's a lesson in timing and patience.

Exploring Outside of Milwaukee

Saturday, my friend Tony invited me to fish in some streams north of town near Manitowoc.  First we fished the West Twin River for smallmouth.  I caught one right away, but neither of us caught any after that.  It was the biggest smallmouth I've caught so far this season.

After pounding all the smallmouth structure, I saw some rising fish dimpling the surface.  I tied on an elk hair caddis and went after them.

I love catching anything on a dry fly. I caught half a dozen or so of these minnows, then we headed for the east branch to try for some trout.

I caught some chubs and minnows on dries, but nothing else.  Tony landed a couple browns.  I managed to snap some pics of one of them

On to the Manitowoc River.  We first stopped at an overpass neither of us had ever fished at.  We both caught a couple fish, but nothing overly exciting.  It seemed just to be an off day.

We hit one more spot a little further upstream.  I went upstream, Tony headed down.  I lost one smaller than average smallmouth, I don't think Tony caught any.  As I headed back down to meet up with Tony I took a nasty spill that left me reeling like Peter Griffin.  I stepped in a crevice between two sheets of concrete and tripped over another. The piece I stumbled over put its jagged edge into my thigh, and my attempt to brace for the fall resulted in another jagged edged piece of concrete finding the inside of my forearm.  My thigh is still quite sore, the arm is fine.  I must have been in some serious pain at the time, because I no longer wanted to fish, and I have fished in some pretty miserable conditions.

Back in Milwaukee, I have started fishing up above the concrete on the Menomonee River and found a healthy creek chub population.  Nice sized fish that bite artificials consistantly and are great fun when I don't feel like driving.  I've fished for these with fly gear and spinning gear.  The best lures seem to be tiny trout spoons.  A 1/8 ounce Little Cleo works great.  Spinners have been productive as well.  I'll try to catch anything.

Rainy Day Redemption

It felt good to get out with my Little Cleo and hook some rainy day bass last Wednesday morning after the previous outing, The Skunkfest of '13.

Little Cleo made friends with some clams, she told them they were nice and petted them, then she told them bye-bye.

We only caught two fish and missed one other, but they were decent fish.  Considering the cloudy water and the swift current, I think we did ok.

Sunday evening we went out with spinning gear again.  We haven't really had a notable rainfall recently, but the water was still cloudy and a little high.  Sunday we caught half a dozen or so fish, and missed a few.  One was a really nice bass that left me with a totally ravaged curly tail grub when he threw the hook.  These are the nicest fish from sunday.

The Highs And The Lows; or, Losing The Fish of The Season

I had one of my best days, if not my best day, of the season fishing for smallmouth in the Milwaukee River earlier this week.  I got up early Thursday morning to fish the same stretch hoping for similar results.  Instead of fish on back to back casts, I got the skunk.

It was cold that morning, mid 50s.  The water was in the 70s, and as high as it was Monday morning with a similar rate of flow.  It was actually relieving to escape the coolness of the air by wading wet in the warm water.

The wild card seems to be water clarity and multiple hatches.  I'm not sure why the water was cloudier Thursday than it was Monday right after the rain.  Maybe it just takes all the silt that long to wash downstream from the headwaters.  There were little white mayflies and tricos everywhere.  The bass may have fed on the hatches all night.

I found a pool with what I thought were fish feeding on the surface, but learned that they were carp.  I made a few casts into the pool and hoped for the best, but... I continued down to the same spot I caught so many fish earlier but never even had a strike.

I made my way back up and fished one final pool, a pool that is usually good for a fish or two.  On my first cast I had a strike and a good hookset.  But this was a big fish that I never got the upper hand on.  I had a hard time pulling the fish from its lie with my five weight.  When I finally got it out of the pool it rose near the surface.  I saw a flash of green through the cloudy water, so I'm sure I had a decent sized northern pike on.  Once it was out of the pool, then the fish let me know I was not even close to having the upper hand. my reel hissed as the fish peeled off line, making a beeline for the weeds.  My line tangled, the fish broke my 5X tippet easily.

The streams will probably not be great for fishing for a while with the rain we are expected to get over the next few days.  On the plus side, if the weather stays cool, overcast and rainy too much longer, we might see an early salmon run!

Warmwater Fishing On The Milwaukee

The Milwaukee River is finally low enough for some decent fishing. The past week has been brutally hot, and that probably affected fishing, but I caught fish all three times I went out in the past week.

Last Sunday afternoon I went with Tony, a friend who is more familiar with the Milwaukee north of town.  We fished up in Cedarburg for a while, then came back into town and fished more near the Capitol Drive bridge.  The pressure was high, and the fish had been scattered.  The fish pictured below is my nicest smallmouth bass of the day.

Thursday was my day off from work.  I planned on leaving early to get on the river before it got too hot, but I slept in pretty good.  When I talked about going that late, my wife wanted to come stand in the river with me as a method to beat the heat.  Little Cleo had her first experience in the river, she really enjoyed it.

I caught a couple of aggressive rock bass.  They are always fun to catch.  Little Cleo petted them and said the were nice and told them buhbye.  She called them bluegill, which is close enough for me!

Friday morning, Little Cleo had us up pretty early.  I think she was up around 6:00.  My wife was exhausted and needed more sleep, so I volunteered to keep Little Cleo busy for a few hours by hitting the Milwaukee with spinning gear.  Friday morning was the most productive day of the week.  I caught mostly small fish, but we had a good time. 

Now, Little Cleo pretends she is fishing in a boat all the time.  I gave her the lower section of my broken fly rod with an old spinning reel on it.  She says, "reel reel reel, oh walleye!"  Its so cute, I can't stand it!



Season Opener Report: It Was Rough

After my pre-season run-in with a decent sized smallmouth in my local stream, I was determined to catch more.  Saturday, I donned my vest, grabbed my spinning gear, and took my little girl fishing again.
I didn't realise we had gotten so much rain!
Upon seeing the swollen flow of coffee where the Menomonee River ususally flows, I almost just turned around and headed home.  But I decided I could use the walk anyway, it couldn't hurt to try.  Right near the first bend under the Wisconsin Avenue bridge, I started seeing the suckers.  Lots of suckers.  I made a few casts with a lead head "Woolly Bugger" jig I tied for spinning gear and I caught a couple suckers.  As I put the first sucker back, my little girl told the fish "Bye bye."  It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.  I wanted to find some game fish though.  We walked a long way, not seeing anything but rough fish.

Much higher water than last week

Very fast flow

My hand tied "Woolly Bugger" jig

Sunday, I went out again.  But this time, I went with rough fish on my mind.  You can only catch what's there, right?  I rigged up a purple Mister Twister, went down to the river with a half hour to kill, and I absolutely slayed the redhorse!  In 30 minutes, I caught eight suckers!  I literally spent more time unhooking fish than I spent fishing.  A couple of them were bruisers too!  A couple were foul hooked, but most took the Twister right in the mouth.

Monday I went out with about a half hour to kill again before work.  There were much less suckers, but the ones that were there were nice sized fish.  There were a lot more carp up that far though.  On my first cast, I caught a nice sucker that caused the carp to scatter.  Too bad, I really wanted to catch a carp on my medium action hand-me-down rod with four pound test.  I caught one other sucker before heading home.

I did some research, there are a lot of different species of suckers in the Genus (Moxostoma) that includes redhorse.  It's hard to tell some of them apart without actually opening them up.  I'm kind of curious how many species there actually are in the Menomonee.  It's obvious that I caught several different species.