Fishing Articles

As we are reading this article and all enjoying Great Lakes Angler magazine, chances are pretty good we might all have a little problem in common.  Wait—what?  Well, this may be hard to swallow, but we “just maybe” have too many salmon spoons?  (And maybe more than fits in our boats!) LOL—this is me for sure! We can all agree there are some awesome tackle companies out there, that have earned our brand loyalty and all offer awesome new spoons each season, new colors, patterns, catchy names...  Some are our “Go-To” spoons, better at catching fish and earn the prime...

Coming from the West Coast catching a double-digit brown is a once in a lifetime experience, for most. Nevertheless, if you live in Oswego, New York, and troll Lake Ontario, catching a 10-pound brown matches the feat of landing a 3-pound stocked rainbow out West. “A 10-pound brown is a nice fish, but last year we caught one to two of those on almost every trip,” says guide Troy Creasy of High Adventure Sport Fishing. Similar to the Milwaukee Harbor experience on the western shore of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, eastern Lake Ontario’s brown trout fishing is almost surreal to...

 (Published in Spring 2018) Or, in other words, can our coho and Chinook salmon in Lakes Michigan and Huron adapt to a new forage base? And, can they change from being pelagic predators, feeding in open water at mid-depth to foraging on the bottom? To review how we got to this point, the quagga mussels caused the plankton levels to decrease enough to cause the alewives to crash in Lake Huron a number of years ago. A similar crash in Lake Michigan is approaching but it has taken longer for that to happen. The reasons are likely the greater depth of...

When looking for walleyes on new water, where do you begin? Walleye guide and renaissance angler Tony Roach simply clears his mind, opens his eyes, and adds up the usual variables. “Never go anywhere thinking you know where the fish will be,” he says. “Preconceived notions get you into trouble,” Roach added. “If you believe you know where walleyes are on new water, you spend too much time trying to prove yourself right. Check every theory quickly, efficiently, and move on. When you’re beating a dead horse, the quicker you admit it the better off you’ll be.” Roach refuses to...

I don’t know the statistics but most days and most places I’ve been on the Great Lakes there are more fishermen riding around in boats they towed to the lake and launched than anglers out in permanently moored boats. Trailered boats outnumber bigger, permanently moored boats in most of the Great Lakes.  Almost every boat manufacturer offers trailerable models, small enough to tow, but geared for big water safety and fishability. They make sense; plus, trailerable boats are less expensive to buy and operate. I’m sure you’ve seen dozens of articles about fishing small boats on the Great Lakes, setting...