Whalons 82315

[MarknFish (Mark)]

I haven't been able to spend near enough time on the water in the past two seasons but Sunday I had the pleasure of having a good friend and his father from PA aboard. I didn't have high hopes of much salmon action but knew we could stack up the lakers and it really didn't matter as I only get to fish with these two about once a year so it was all about catching up. We started in search mode at Split rock and briefly entered Whalons and found 65 degree water 85 down. We circled back out to the abyss and found 52 degrees and after a few passes we finally got a release only to find a shaker. Reset and 5 minutes later we have another fish on a Honeybee Bella, it didn't fight much so we all thought laker but to our surprise it turned out to be a fat 4lb salmon. Game on, or so we thought. After 1.5hrs of nothing we moved into Whalon's again and setup on bottom in 85-100 FOW for lakers. First release came on a stinger glow dolphin and again to our surprise another 4lb salmon. Here's the spoons for the first few fish:



We started to get a steady flow of lakers going after changing up some spoons to these two. For the rest of the day we never changed them again! The top spoon is CI and the bottom is a Williams, not sure the flavor but it's been good to me when I've been out. The action was so steady we just kept a two rigger program going.



Here's Dickie who's 85 with a nice salmon:



Ky with a nice laker:



Lamprey's were light today with only 2 coming into the boat, this one on a laker and another very large one that slipped out of the net as we brought in a salmon.



We kept the program going right up until 4pm when we left. No huge lakers, but lots in the 6-8lb range and feisty. All were returned to live another day and we kept 5 salmon for dinner and the freezer. In the warm water conditions the salmon didn't give us much of a battle but our last one put on a show and we had one fish that popped the rigged and ran straight at the boat. We gave up on it only to have it sail out of the water right next to us. We never strayed from 85-90 fow with the riggers right off bottom and the occasional tick to stir things up. No blades and all lures 15-20ft off the ball. I took off the fishhawk so I don't know what the speed and temp was but with all the fish it didn't matter. Enjoy the fishing if you can get out!

[Reelax]

Nice job Mark!!!! Raz and I did 23 salmon and a brown today in 3hrs on the inland sea!!! 23" was biggest and they hit everything we threw at em... Wow what a bite today!

[fishmaster176]

Holy Crap!!!! Nice to see the IS producing numbers and some size. Gotta put the riggers back on and give it a try. Love the Bass and Northerns, but going deep sounds like the only way to go. Thanks to MarknFish and Reelax for your reports. Fish On.

[fishy1]

looks like the bite was on . thanks for the pics and reports . its great knowing how the northern part of the lake is doing.

[Crayfish]

Nice going guys!! How deep were you finding the salmon on the IS, Reelax? We fished the broad lake side of Grand Isle on Saturday from Cumberland Head down to Providence with only 1 laker to show for it. We marked some fish in the 100-120ft range off Cumberland Head, but didn't mark hardly anything once we got south of the ferry crossing and headed over to the VT side. Sounds like we should have kept heading south to Stave, based on one of the other reports on here! We tried a little bit of everything ... small jointed Rapalas, spoons, blades, on bottom, 10-20ft off bottom. The only fish we picked up was on a small silver Flatfish just above and 2' behind a set of sliver/blue blades that were hooked to the ball and setup a couple feet off bottom in ~120' of water.

We did have some fun catching smallies around Providence, though. I caught 1 Master Angler sized smallie and my son caught a few smaller ones. It was a nice change of pace from banging bottom with manual riggers.

[Lavman]

Great reports! Nice going on the catching guys!

[Reelax]

Nice going guys!! How deep were you finding the salmon on the IS, Reelax? We fished the broad lake side of Grand Isle on Saturday from Cumberland Head down to Providence with only 1 laker to show for it. We marked some fish in the 100-120ft range off Cumberland Head, but didn't mark hardly anything once we got south of the ferry crossing and headed over to the VT side. Sounds like we should have kept heading south to Stave, based on one of the other reports on here! We tried a little bit of everything ... small jointed Rapalas, spoons, blades, on bottom, 10-20ft off bottom. The only fish we picked up was on a small silver Flatfish just above and 2' behind a set of sliver/blue blades that were hooked to the ball and setup a couple feet off bottom in ~120' of water.

We did have some fun catching smallies around Providence, though. I caught 1 Master Angler sized smallie and my son caught a few smaller ones. It was a nice change of pace from banging bottom with manual riggers.

Salmon were 70-90 feet, but at 2pm we had one hit a line at the surface in the propwash while being deployed 75deg water!... I also got 2 salmon on one rod, cheater and main line...

[Crayfish]

Wow, I guess you just never know! Thanks for the report.

[Fishdawg]

I fished out of Converse Bay on Sunday as well. Shot across to Split Rock at Sunrise to set up. Within 10 minutes we had a release as we headed into Whalon's Bay and boated a fat salmon that weighed between 5 and 6 lbs. Caught it on a rigger at 80 feet down on the only MT lure I own (silver with some blue and pink). we picked up 3 more over the next hour all small ones and as the sun got up the bite died off. We were seeing a lot of fish on the graph down deep around the Split Rock area. I was running some verticle blades that I got from Tamiron some years back and customized. They are longer than your normal blade set ups, they have 5 blades that are the large size IM6 lures that I customized by taping the fed ex colors on one side and I drew with a sharpie the dockside skull and cross rods logo on the white backside. I call them my dockside blades. 3 of the fish came on that rigger.

[jimbow]

Fantastic!