FISHING REPORTS
Lake Michigan
Racine County, Wisconsin
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Displaying 1 to 10 of 1,093 posts
Good day All. Just a quick question on finding a boat launch. Is there any in the harbor open to public with or without fees. I have a 16.5 Alumacraft and not sure about going on the big water and would like to stay in the harbor if possible. Thank you in advance for any information!
Racine 7/1 Saturday Night
Got a bit of a late start Saturday night setting up in 85fow at N42.45 on a NE troll. Had reports of kings on the hill and figured to work it north past wind point until we hit some. Ran a fairly deep spread, as the down temp was about 53 degrees down 60 in 90fow. We dropped riggers first at 65 and 75 and had some action as we were getting 4 wide coppers into place. Just could not keep fish on the hook early and it became a frustration as we went 1 for our first 8 in the first hour and a half, boxing a decent coho over 5 pounds. Our first pass from 90 to 130 showed a great deal of activity on the hill with bait in the bottom 20 feet and arcs in the same depths with occasional fish up in the 55-65ft range. The riggers with spin doctors were taking most of the hits with the 300-350 coppers the next best presentations with magnum spoons with white/glow in them. From 8:00 on we did better boxing 5 of our last 7 hits, finishing the night 6 for 15 with 2 coho, 2 lakers, and 2 decent sized kings at 12 and 18 pounds. We were busy all night and I had a first timer our on our 3 person crew, she picked it up very quickly and had a great time. With a more experienced crew we would have worked a few waypoints more closely, as we wandered out off the fish a few times when landing the kings. The bigger king came on a wire diver out 150 after sundown on a raspberry carbon mag spoon. Most of the bigger king marks we observed were just east of the hill in the deeper water 125-130fow.
See you out there,
Stosh
Lord Willing
Got a bit of a late start Saturday night setting up in 85fow at N42.45 on a NE troll. Had reports of kings on the hill and figured to work it north past wind point until we hit some. Ran a fairly deep spread, as the down temp was about 53 degrees down 60 in 90fow. We dropped riggers first at 65 and 75 and had some action as we were getting 4 wide coppers into place. Just could not keep fish on the hook early and it became a frustration as we went 1 for our first 8 in the first hour and a half, boxing a decent coho over 5 pounds. Our first pass from 90 to 130 showed a great deal of activity on the hill with bait in the bottom 20 feet and arcs in the same depths with occasional fish up in the 55-65ft range. The riggers with spin doctors were taking most of the hits with the 300-350 coppers the next best presentations with magnum spoons with white/glow in them. From 8:00 on we did better boxing 5 of our last 7 hits, finishing the night 6 for 15 with 2 coho, 2 lakers, and 2 decent sized kings at 12 and 18 pounds. We were busy all night and I had a first timer our on our 3 person crew, she picked it up very quickly and had a great time. With a more experienced crew we would have worked a few waypoints more closely, as we wandered out off the fish a few times when landing the kings. The bigger king came on a wire diver out 150 after sundown on a raspberry carbon mag spoon. Most of the bigger king marks we observed were just east of the hill in the deeper water 125-130fow.
See you out there,
Stosh
Lord Willing
Thanks for sharing PP.
In hindsight, heading inside to fish top to bottom in the 60-80ft range would likely have produced a few more pounds, as we only picked up 1 additional steelhead. Being newer to the port, I have not taken the time to fish browns yet, although we did pick up a few in early may this year when the coho were in tight. I used to run down from MKE to fish the wind point valleys when we would have a westerly wind for a few days in June, and had some success popping some mature kings there. When we got out on Friday morning, I was surprised to see how warm the water was inside of 130fow this week. There was no 40-50 degree water anywhere inside of 130, whereas last week and the week before it was in the mid to low 40s down 40 in 70fow. That is what drove my decision not to go in there after 9am.
Stosh
Lord Willing
In hindsight, heading inside to fish top to bottom in the 60-80ft range would likely have produced a few more pounds, as we only picked up 1 additional steelhead. Being newer to the port, I have not taken the time to fish browns yet, although we did pick up a few in early may this year when the coho were in tight. I used to run down from MKE to fish the wind point valleys when we would have a westerly wind for a few days in June, and had some success popping some mature kings there. When we got out on Friday morning, I was surprised to see how warm the water was inside of 130fow this week. There was no 40-50 degree water anywhere inside of 130, whereas last week and the week before it was in the mid to low 40s down 40 in 70fow. That is what drove my decision not to go in there after 9am.
Stosh
Lord Willing
Racine 6/9-6/10 (Fri-Sat)
Decided to fish the NEW Big Pond Brawl on Saturday, which is a 4 port tourney including Racine, Kenosha, Winthrop, and Northpoint harbors (hosted by Lake Michigan Anglers). The format is to score your top 5 fish by weight alone, with a 2 laker max. First off, it was a great event, nice job to LMA for running this challenging multi-port format and broadcasting the weigh-in results same day!
I took Friday off to pre-fish from Racine with my mate and we started off at 5am in 75fow N42.42 on a SE troll. Wanted to see if we could find any kings up above the hill, as they seemed to have left for deeper water as of last week. We ran no coho rigs, opting for a mix of mag spoons, flasher flys and one bait rig with an MC Rocket. Had a few hits from 90-115 but no early king action. We were marking a great deal of both fish and bait in the 105-115 range, so we focused our efforts there taking 6 coho on our 6 rod spread by about 8:45am. With no king action, we decided to search for some lake trout, as I am not familiar with the lake trout bite in Racine, having fished the past 30 years primarily out of McKinley. We picked up and powered north to about N42.46 into 100fow and setup on a N troll. We zig-zagged north in between 95 and 120fow finding a couple of pockets of large marks about 10 feet off the bottom, but no takers on our tin-can rigs. We marked the location of the concentrated fish to try there later that evening, and headed in to get a bite and pickup a third fisherman at 4pm.
Powered back out to the marks set in 115fow just north of Racine setting 4 wide lines with mag spoons in orange, green, and blue. Wire divers were set out 110 and 150 with flasher fly rigs, and 3 riggers 55, 70,100. The temps were about 57 on the surface with 52 degrees down 70 in 115. When we worked out later to 140, the temp down 70 was 49 degrees. We set a troll due north to work the 110-120 range across the 3 waypoints we set in the morning and the action was good, but mostly concentrated to the actual waypoints, which held the fish over the last 4 hours. We picked away at the coho bite and added in a 5lb laker and a 5lb bow as we reached the north end of the waypoints about 7:30pm, still no king bites. We had been changing out baits to try to get some of the deeper large marks to take, but no luck. As evening approached, we stayed in 110 until the sun hit the horizon to see if the kings would come out to play, but still no takers, so we turned due west and worked up the hill as it got dark. All in all we had a decent bite, going 9 for 16 on the evening.
Our decision for tournament morning was to start at our 3 waypoints in 115fow just north of the harbor, try to get 5 fish over 4lbs in the box, then try for some trout to add in some additional weight. If we ran into some kings, we would stay as long as they did. They cut us loose at 4:30am and we were radioed to drop lines at 5am. We went to set 8 lines for the first hour, keeping the center rigger out to have more transom space to work the fish in early. Our 4 wide lines were 2 mag orange ladder back spoons on 5color and 6 color lead, and inside those we had a 200 copper and 265 copper with a half green jeans mag and a blue flounder mag. Wire divers had an 8" spin doctor black with ice tape and my Shazam fly (black/silver/UV crinkle) and an 8" silver Pro-king flasher with a Black Jack Brad's cut plug (tuna). the riggers had 8" spin doctors (white two face, and glow 2 face) and Brad's Spotted Cows. I got the port side set quickly, but my mate could not get his side set, as the coho were ripping his lures right out of the gate. His rigger down 45 had 6 hits in the first 45 minutes with the 2 wide lines adding another 2 hits, we could not get the diver in on that side until after 6:15am. As soon as we got a break in the action, I quickly changed out 2 baits on the port side and hits began there as well. We worked through all 3 waypoints by 7:30am and had caught 8 coho missing another 6 or so. With 5 coho in the box all in the 3.5-4.25 range, we decided to troll west into 100 and reset a deep 6 line spread focusing the 2 deep riggers on the bottom for trout and running wire divers and coppers at 300 and 330 for potential kings. We stood by the riggers keeping them on the bottom and the trout cooperated well enough to box 3 decent sized fish at 9, 9.5, and 13.5 pounds. Still no kings and we had to make a decision whether to keep chasing the elusive kings or try for larger silver fish, or perhaps browns. We opted to run deep to try to get some larger steelhead. Pulled lines and ran out to 205fow N42.42 and setup on an easterly troll. Got a 8 line spread out with mainly orange spoons and picked up the speed to about 3.5 on the surface and 2.7 at the ball down 55 (fishhawk speeds). Took a couple of hits right away in 208fow, but once again they were coho. We kept heading east to and had a screamer on a 5 color orange hulk mag spoon. It stopped screaming, but kept pulling line slowly and I could feel VERY heavy weight and had no chance to gain any line at all. It kept clicking out slowly and I had so much pressure on it the rod was at risk of breaking. We had slowed as far as we could, and I called to have all the rigger gear pulled out and also the wire divers. Once this was done, we went to neutral for long stretches of time so I could gain line, then back in gear for 5 second. We did this for 20 minutes, until the fish was in sight. We knew something must be wrong, and were correct, as we saw a long steelhead coming in belly first. He was mouth hooked, then belly wrapped with the line. We got him to the net and he was about 36" long and very thin at about 8.5 pounds. We spun back around at 229fow trolling back east and pulled another couple of coho, but decided to call it a day at about noon. We finished the day 16 for 25 with 4 lakers, 1 bow, and the rest coho. Our total weight for our top 5 came in at 38 pounds, which was not enough to get into the prizes, as it took 43 pounds to get payback. Some great boxes came in with several in the 50s, a few in the 60s, and one topping over 70 pounds (they found some kings).
All in all it was a great weekend of fishing this great lake of ours. Having 5 species of fish to chase and a variety of tournaments to choose from, if you have a taste for some competition, is a blessing few states have to offer.
?See you out there,
Stosh
Lord Willing
Decided to fish the NEW Big Pond Brawl on Saturday, which is a 4 port tourney including Racine, Kenosha, Winthrop, and Northpoint harbors (hosted by Lake Michigan Anglers). The format is to score your top 5 fish by weight alone, with a 2 laker max. First off, it was a great event, nice job to LMA for running this challenging multi-port format and broadcasting the weigh-in results same day!
I took Friday off to pre-fish from Racine with my mate and we started off at 5am in 75fow N42.42 on a SE troll. Wanted to see if we could find any kings up above the hill, as they seemed to have left for deeper water as of last week. We ran no coho rigs, opting for a mix of mag spoons, flasher flys and one bait rig with an MC Rocket. Had a few hits from 90-115 but no early king action. We were marking a great deal of both fish and bait in the 105-115 range, so we focused our efforts there taking 6 coho on our 6 rod spread by about 8:45am. With no king action, we decided to search for some lake trout, as I am not familiar with the lake trout bite in Racine, having fished the past 30 years primarily out of McKinley. We picked up and powered north to about N42.46 into 100fow and setup on a N troll. We zig-zagged north in between 95 and 120fow finding a couple of pockets of large marks about 10 feet off the bottom, but no takers on our tin-can rigs. We marked the location of the concentrated fish to try there later that evening, and headed in to get a bite and pickup a third fisherman at 4pm.
Powered back out to the marks set in 115fow just north of Racine setting 4 wide lines with mag spoons in orange, green, and blue. Wire divers were set out 110 and 150 with flasher fly rigs, and 3 riggers 55, 70,100. The temps were about 57 on the surface with 52 degrees down 70 in 115. When we worked out later to 140, the temp down 70 was 49 degrees. We set a troll due north to work the 110-120 range across the 3 waypoints we set in the morning and the action was good, but mostly concentrated to the actual waypoints, which held the fish over the last 4 hours. We picked away at the coho bite and added in a 5lb laker and a 5lb bow as we reached the north end of the waypoints about 7:30pm, still no king bites. We had been changing out baits to try to get some of the deeper large marks to take, but no luck. As evening approached, we stayed in 110 until the sun hit the horizon to see if the kings would come out to play, but still no takers, so we turned due west and worked up the hill as it got dark. All in all we had a decent bite, going 9 for 16 on the evening.
Our decision for tournament morning was to start at our 3 waypoints in 115fow just north of the harbor, try to get 5 fish over 4lbs in the box, then try for some trout to add in some additional weight. If we ran into some kings, we would stay as long as they did. They cut us loose at 4:30am and we were radioed to drop lines at 5am. We went to set 8 lines for the first hour, keeping the center rigger out to have more transom space to work the fish in early. Our 4 wide lines were 2 mag orange ladder back spoons on 5color and 6 color lead, and inside those we had a 200 copper and 265 copper with a half green jeans mag and a blue flounder mag. Wire divers had an 8" spin doctor black with ice tape and my Shazam fly (black/silver/UV crinkle) and an 8" silver Pro-king flasher with a Black Jack Brad's cut plug (tuna). the riggers had 8" spin doctors (white two face, and glow 2 face) and Brad's Spotted Cows. I got the port side set quickly, but my mate could not get his side set, as the coho were ripping his lures right out of the gate. His rigger down 45 had 6 hits in the first 45 minutes with the 2 wide lines adding another 2 hits, we could not get the diver in on that side until after 6:15am. As soon as we got a break in the action, I quickly changed out 2 baits on the port side and hits began there as well. We worked through all 3 waypoints by 7:30am and had caught 8 coho missing another 6 or so. With 5 coho in the box all in the 3.5-4.25 range, we decided to troll west into 100 and reset a deep 6 line spread focusing the 2 deep riggers on the bottom for trout and running wire divers and coppers at 300 and 330 for potential kings. We stood by the riggers keeping them on the bottom and the trout cooperated well enough to box 3 decent sized fish at 9, 9.5, and 13.5 pounds. Still no kings and we had to make a decision whether to keep chasing the elusive kings or try for larger silver fish, or perhaps browns. We opted to run deep to try to get some larger steelhead. Pulled lines and ran out to 205fow N42.42 and setup on an easterly troll. Got a 8 line spread out with mainly orange spoons and picked up the speed to about 3.5 on the surface and 2.7 at the ball down 55 (fishhawk speeds). Took a couple of hits right away in 208fow, but once again they were coho. We kept heading east to and had a screamer on a 5 color orange hulk mag spoon. It stopped screaming, but kept pulling line slowly and I could feel VERY heavy weight and had no chance to gain any line at all. It kept clicking out slowly and I had so much pressure on it the rod was at risk of breaking. We had slowed as far as we could, and I called to have all the rigger gear pulled out and also the wire divers. Once this was done, we went to neutral for long stretches of time so I could gain line, then back in gear for 5 second. We did this for 20 minutes, until the fish was in sight. We knew something must be wrong, and were correct, as we saw a long steelhead coming in belly first. He was mouth hooked, then belly wrapped with the line. We got him to the net and he was about 36" long and very thin at about 8.5 pounds. We spun back around at 229fow trolling back east and pulled another couple of coho, but decided to call it a day at about noon. We finished the day 16 for 25 with 4 lakers, 1 bow, and the rest coho. Our total weight for our top 5 came in at 38 pounds, which was not enough to get into the prizes, as it took 43 pounds to get payback. Some great boxes came in with several in the 50s, a few in the 60s, and one topping over 70 pounds (they found some kings).
All in all it was a great weekend of fishing this great lake of ours. Having 5 species of fish to chase and a variety of tournaments to choose from, if you have a taste for some competition, is a blessing few states have to offer.
?See you out there,
Stosh
Lord Willing
Halibut…. If you can’t catch brown trout along the shorelines…. Maybe try golf? If you want to see how easy it is jump in the boat with me and we can go to any harbor and work the edges and teach ya a little something. We can target smallies as well…. There’s fish in shallow if ya put in some effort.
Maybe you are better just going to one of those little stocked trout ponds with a hook and some corn, paying for the little trout there. Sounds up your alley.
Maybe you are better just going to one of those little stocked trout ponds with a hook and some corn, paying for the little trout there. Sounds up your alley.
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