Archive for November, 2009

When November rolls around, a big change happens in most of the harbors around the Chicagoland area. The people, who previously packed the shores, shoulder-to-shoulder, have disappeared as the hope of catching a good eater salmon has quickly faded. Now, trips to the harbor consist of maybe a few guys, who check out the harbors for a short time, than call it quits during the early hours of evening. It may be the cold weather; it may be the fact that the fish are dying and no good to eat. Either way, November is one of my favorite months to fish. Despite being old, moldy, and virtually falling apart, the king salmon still have a lot of fight left in them. I enjoy fishing not for the meals, but for the enjoyment of hunting and catching down a fish. Being in the harbor by myself, or with a friend, and having the whole place to myself is a great feeling. I can fish where I want, fight the fish how I want, and actually feel like I am in some remote place like Northern Ontario. The picture below is testament to this.

Dusable Harbor after most have given up on the salmon run.

Just a few weeks ago, this wall would have been lined with 10-12 people, now, on a perfectly clear, beautiful November Saturday, the harbor is void of people. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are people who get out and still fish with a fury. It is just not the same “salmon frenzy” as was so short ago.

Now for the fishing:

Wednesday, November 4^th

My mother came over to watch the baby, as she usually does on a Wednesday. This gave me the opportunity to go out and hit the harbors for a few hours. There were some fish surfacing on occasion and the occasional small pod of them swimming around. I soaked spawn at different depths the few hours I was there and it produced nothing. I threw a variety of crank baits, and it produced nothing. The only fish I got was on a ¾ ounce green-glow KO wobbler. I noticed that after the fish were surfacing, they headed straight down to the bottom. I decided to put on a spoon, because I could keep it at a greater depth with a slower speed. I had three follows, two other hits, and this skinny female king shown below. That was it for the evening.

A spawned out female king salmon.

Saturday, November 7^th

A few guys on a local fishing site were talking about heading north of the border for fishing. I was going to be in that area anyways, so I decided to try the main harbor in Milwaukee. I have never fished for salmon, in Wisconsin, so I was eager with anticipation to give it a go. When I first I arrived, I knew I was in a much better location than my other salmon experiences. I saw more large salmon and brown trout cruising, in a few hours in Wisconsin, than I have in the previous few years of Illinois fishing. I was armed with spawn on one rod, cranks on another, and finally a tinsel jig on a lighter rod. The spawn had no-takers during the daylight hours. The cranks did nothing all day long. I did manage to get a few hits, including one from a brown, on my tiny tinsel jig. I managed to bring in one male Coho around mid-afternoon.

A McKinley Habor coho caught on a tinsel jig.

Later afternoon, I was fishing high off the railing of the harbor. I see two familiar faces down on the pier, very close to the water. One guy says to me “You look familiar.” I tell him that I am Matt. He tells me to get off the rails and join him on the piers. It was Andrew Ragas, a very talented fisherman and website designer from the Chicagoland area. You can pick his blog up at this link: Fishcast: Stories of the Angling World. He has a lot of fishing skill in many aspects and a very good writer about angling. He was accompanied by Dan, another prominent member of Andrew’s website. Andrew and Dan quickly let me into the gate and began to show me the areas that were worth fishing. It hadn’t been but 10 minutes and Andrew had a pair of salmon on the board. They were moldy and dying, but they were quality salmon, none the less. I had a fish on a jig, but with the threat of it spooling me, I quickly tightened my drag and the fish broke off. It was not a large salmon, but my lightweight equipment that the jig was hooked up to was not match for it.

The fishing slowed down for a while until darkness set in. As the sun began to set, another fellow blogger made an arrival to the scene. It was Mike Planthaber, a quality fisherman who spends most of his time hunting fish on the great lakes. His blog Angling in Mplant’s Neck of the Woods is also a must read for salmon and great lakes fisherman. He has a lot of knowledge that can be gained by reading his reports.

Mike had brought some fresh spawn, from a brown trout, wrapped in chartreuse spawn sacks. This spawn would be the ticket to our success. Over the next hour or so, the action was fairly slow, as we were going after browns in the main harbor, but they just were not active. After the slow brown action, Andrew, Dan, and I decided to switch over to kings. We were fishing a small area in between a dock and the wall that can be seen in the picture below. Mike and his friend decided to call it a day after a short attempt at browns. They had been fishing the Fox River for ‘eyes’ most of the morning.

Shortly after they left, they action was fierce. The bobbers, set with Mike’s newly arrived spawn, was going down every few minutes. The difficulty of the spot was getting an angry king salmon to cooperate in closed-quarters with tons of potential break-offs. We all hooked into salmon and had many break-offs. The highlights were my somewhat clean salmon, Andrew’s multiple hook-ups, and Dan’s first two kings of his life. Way to Go! The only thing as fun as catching a salmon is seeing someone get one for the first time.

Fighting salmon in tight spaces.

My biggest king of the day.

Dan with his first ever king salmon.

Andrew with his big king for the day.

The early evening had rolled around, and I was due to be home. It was a great day all-around and something I look forward to doing again. It was great to meet some people that I have known only through the internet, and hopefully I will get on another fish adventure with them again.