After launching our 25-foot Tiara charter boat a week ago, we caught two 18-pounders, three 14-pounders and a few smaller ones in a couple of hours of morning fishing. This is how we discovered that the Salmon had “officially” arrived in northern Door County, in Baileys Harbor.

We were eager to launch the second charter boat, a 31 foot Tiara, in the water as soon as possible! Being the only two boats in the Baileys Harbor Marina, no one was sure if the Salmon were steadily arriving but after much speculation on the weather and an early spring, we had to go for it.

This morning, we limited out, with 20 nice fish and we are eagerly looking forward to another spectacular season! We caught some Kings and few Rainbows out of Baileys Harbor in a variety depths and with different lures. A mix of spoons and dodger flies works best. Working Lake Michigan’s current lines, we are delighted to report spectacular success a month ahead of last year.

After spending a long winter re-outfitting both boats with new improvements, the Silver Strike crew finished just in time for the fish! On our 25-foot Tiara (Silver Strike 2) we have added a new 225 h.p. Evinrude motor, a Garmin Colored Fish Finder, a Wireless Raymarine auto pilot, new back end and more! On the 31-foot Tiara open, we updated all the decking, LED lights, added new Canon downriggers, Cannon Intellitroll and so on. We completed all these projects just in time to find the first Salmon in Northern Door County.

The Silver Strike Charter team has been fishing since March for Brown Trout and did not expend one trip with out catching them. We placed 6th in The Door/Kewaunee (Baileys Harbor) Brown Trout Tournament with a 17 lb. brown trout and had success all spring with other large browns.  Even though we were consistently catching brown trout, we decided to take a gamble and it paid off quite well. With catching 7 and maxing out 20 fish on the first two salmon trips of the season, we are very optimistic about this forthcoming salmon season!

For anyone looking to get some great fishing in at our off season rates, this is the year to do it! When searching for charter fishing in Door County, do your research and be confident in your choice. Silver Strike Charter Fishing offers an experienced and knowledgeable captain and crew who are dedicated to seeking out the fish. We look forward to catching lots of fish with you!

Brown Trout are heating up already along the shorelines around the county. In the past few weeks, Lake Michigan was best anywhere from the northern tip of Door County to the south.  Fishing stick baits from streams and murky water has produced the most fish.

In the west, the frozen Bay of Green Bay has just opened up and Brown Trout are starting to heat up. Anywhere from Sturgeon Bay, Egg Harbor, Sister Bay and a few more spots north, fish are being caught.  We will update you in the future weeks to come.

With this early season heat up, we expect to start catching King Salmon by mid to end of May.  spring weather and water temperature affect the Salmon run and last year it wasn’t until the beginning of June before charters started catching the Kings. The year before (2010) was a warmer spring and we were catching them by the end of May. With record warm temperatures, who knows how early the Chinook Salmon will start to run. With the warming lake, we should see the steelhead running earlier as well. As the charter fishing season gets under way we will keep you updated on the Baileys Harbor fishing conditions and other catches around the area.

October 2 afternoon we caught 18 Salmon in one hour and thirty minutes with the customers limit.  Oct. 4 morning Silver Strike caught the 10 fish limit of the two clients in just over an hour.  The fishing has been so good that it has been hard to keep all the lines in the water.  The best depths have been 150 feet of water to 250 feet fishing 60 to 150 down.  Some nice Steelhead were caught this morning as well.  Fishing about 4-7 miles out of Baileys Harbor, Flasher Fly combos have produced the best.  The weather has been perfect and looks to continue this trend over the next week.  Boat traffic has been almost nonexistent with the lake to ourselves.

Salmon fishing on september 24th continued to be very successful out of Baileys Harbor, WI.  Our Charter went out on a morning run aboard the Silver Strike at 6 am.  We ended up boating 27 kings, which half of the salmon were nice 10-15 pounders.  Most of the action came between 165-220 feet of water ranging form 60 to 125 feet down.  The water temperatures have been much cooler spreading the salmon through out the water column.  Flasher fly combos of a variety of colors worked including greens, pearls and blue depending on the cloud cover.

The Catch shown was the morning of Aug. 31.  For the past 5 days the average haul has been 10-15 fish with mostly Chinook Salmon, a third Rainbow trout and a few Lake trout.  The best water depths have been 120-170 feet fishing 50-100 down.  A mix of Lead core, copper, downriggers and dipsys have all produced fish.  Mostly dodger fly combos with color varying on weather and conditions.  The Kings have been a mix of 1-4 year olds with most being in the 10 lb range.  We will update the fishing after the weekend charters and hopefully will continue to provide information into October.

Chinook Salmon

This week Fishing on Lake Michigan has been consistent.  The catches have not been very large in quantity 5-15 but they have been very big in comparison to past years.  The Salmon have been large and putting up great fights.  The bait fish numbers are the largest we have seen in years and the die off is still occurring.  Once the die off is done and water continues to warm I am confident we will be seeing larger catches when the fish are more concentrated into the thermalclines.  Dodgers and Flies have been best over 60-130 feet of water.  The fish have been in the lower half of the water column any where from 45 to 100 feet down.

From June 30th to July 1st the catches on our charter boat have been 10-15 Kings/trip with some Rainbow trout mixed in.  The water temperatures on Lake Michigan have been increasing a little but the fish are still scattered outside of Baileys Harbor.  Finding mostly cold water from the surface down the Salmon have been coming from 40 feet to 100 feet with Rainbow trout coming in the top 40 feet.  Dodger and Flies have been the best for the kings, while spoons have been best with the rainbows.  Early morning and late evening have been best but fish have been biting through out the day.  Most of the fish have been coming from 90-130 feet of water.

Charter Boats from Baileys Harbor south on Lake Michigan have started catching double digit King Salmon catches.

Starting in Algoma and Sturgeon Bay last week Chinooks have been piling into coolers up and down the Door County shoreline.  This catch came from this morning, June 22, Charter out of Baileys Harbor.  The biggest Salmon weighed in at 24.75 lbs on Hickey Brothers fish market electronic scale.  We did not get off the dock until 5:30 am and the conditions were tough to run many lines due to a mixed swell and wind.  We still filled the cooler not including lost fish and multiple broken lines.  The fishing report from Ephraim, Sister Bay, Ellison Bay and Gills Rock has still been dismal. 

The King Salmon are not yet here in large numbers but there are fish being caught and all of them have some size to them.  This morning we went 4 for 5 on the Kings.  Most fish were taken on dipsy divers with dodger fly combos.  It has varied between long lining lead core and copper on certain days to dipsy’s on others with some sporadic hits on downriggers.  The fishing was slow until about 6:30 am and then we started to pick them up.  We found all of them to be full of baitfish ranging in sizes.  Depths of water trolled were 40-100 feet of water with no depth particularly working better than the other.  With the warm weather, baitfish and big salmon around, the big catch is going to happen anytime now!

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