Salmon A Rama Recap
Now that Salmon A Rama is over and I had a day to recoup and gather my thoughts, here's a recap of the last 9 days. Saturday the 15th was the kick off of SAR with sub tournament Super Sweepstakes. The weather and waves cooperated big time unlike last year where we went out in 5-8' waves. This year the 1' rollers was a welcome sight along with the fish that came with it. We missed a few fish that would have really helped but we ended up 9-13 securing an 11th place finish and 11th in big fish with a 17.5lb chinook. Even a 10'' trout or salmon would have put us in 6th place. Sunday's two in a boat was cancelled due to 20mph North winds. Monday I decided to go play in 4-6' rollers and stuck two chinooks and a rainbow. big fish was a 15lb chin. Tuesday I went with my buddy on his boat out of racine and we absolutely lit them up. the three of us went 15-37 in 4 hours including a 22lb chinook that didn't want to play nice with me. Every time I got it to the boat, he decided to take 100' back off the reel. Thursday I decided to go for perch which didn't go that well. I had the Outdoor Writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with who wanted to do a perch article. We got plenty of 4-6'' perch but I could only manage one that was 14''. That night I took my buddy back out trying our hand for brown trout and after four hours of trolling we decided to pull lines and as soon as we started pulling, my down rigger started screaming and the big brown was gone before we could get to the rod. We motored back in and picked up Ice Fishing Legend Doug Bussian and got shot out to deep water. It took a little while but by the time it was all said and done we had gone 11-15. After spending over 24hrs on the water it was time to go home and recoup for a few hours. Saturday was another early morning with blast of for Two in a Boat. Mark and I shot out to deep water where my buddy and I were on fish two days in a row but the fish had either moved or shut down. We ended up going 3-5 the entire morning. Covering water from 170' to 105'. Come to find out the fish had moved deeper and the top 5 boats had their 10 fish in less than two hours in 200-250fow. Sunday I had a morning charter and with writing off SAR I wanted to go out and just have fun. Well I shot out to 200fow and started setting lines and it didn't take long for the fish to start snapping. In the first hour my clients went 3-10 and just as I suspected, the fish shut off. We then spent the next couple hours covering water and having a few hits here and there. All of a sudden we went over a school of Steelhead and ended up tripling up. At noon I decided to pull lines and call it a day after going 7-15. It's time to relax and re-rig my gear and get ready for my final salmon tournament of the summer this weekend, Brew City. The winds are looking pretty awful so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
