Popular Great Lakes gamefish species such as salmon, trout and walleye head to open water during the heat of late summer, where they often suspend at various depths. Instead of relating to bottom structure, as they might at other times of the season, the fish seek places in the water level where a combination of factors, including temperature, oxygen, light penetration and available food, create a comfortable place for the fish to hold and inhabit until one or more of those conditions changes. These preferred depths can be broad, and you may find fish flourishing throughout a 50-foot section of water column. More often, however, the depth offering the preferred combination of all those factors—and therefore holding the most fish—is a narrow one. Any angler who has had fish after fish hit a lure trolled at a particular depth, while a similar bait presented a few feet deeper or shallower is ignored, knows just how precise presentations must be at times to elicit a strike.
Depth Finder
The key to consistently catching suspended Great Lakes gamefish is identifying the depth at which they are holding and then presenting your baits at that level, or within striking distance of same. The longer you keep your offering at the depth the gamefish prefer, the more likely you are to put it in view of an active salmon, trout or walleye that will pounce on it.
This “controlled depth” fishing tactic is the key to consistently catching open water gamefish, and why so many Great Lakes fishing boats are rigged with special equipment to allow anglers to place baits at targeted depths and keep them there. The most popular depth control device used by Great Lakes anglers is a downrigger.
A downrigger is actually a large reel fitted to an arm or “boom,” spooled with wire cable and mounted atop the transom of the boat. The boom has a pulley at one end and the other is attached to the “reel” or spool. The cable is threaded from the spool through the pulley and attached to a heavy weight, which is raised and lowered by cranking the reel’s spool, either manually or using an electric motor in the case of power model downriggers. A counter keeps track of how many feet of cable are out, allowing the angler to return baits to the same depth. The number of feet shown on the counter does not reflect the actual depth of the ball and the baits, due to drag on the cable and weight from the moving boat, which creates an angle in the presentation.
Weighted Factors
Usually made of lead weighing from a pound to 12 or more, the weight or “cannon ball” is fitted with a release clip that is snapped onto the fishing line, which the weight pulls down to a specific depth and holds, as it trails the bait or lure behind. One or more additional lines (called “stackers”) can be held with clip releases set on the cable above the weight or “ball” to present baits at various depths. The near-vertical presentation is dictated by the weight of the ball and the forward speed of the boat: the heavier and slower, the more vertical the weight hangs.
When a fish hits a lure trolled behind a downrigger ball or on the cable above it, the clip releases the line from the ball or cable and the fish is fought in a conventional manner, free of the weighed system. When the fish is landed the ball is cranked up and the line is reattached using the release clips and the ball and baits are lowered back to the desired depth.
Precision Fishing
What a downrigger does better than any other controlled depth technique is allow the angler to present baits at a precise depth and keep them there. When a fish finder shows that the fish are suspended at 35 feet, with a downrigger you can drop your baits to run at exactly that depth, putting them into the feeding range of the fish. And they’re not just for targeting suspended fish; when species such as walleye are hugging the bottom, as they often will on hot summer days, you can set the downrigger to place the ball deep enough to drag baits and dredge fish up right off the bottom.
Downriggers are available in sizes from portable manual models that actually fit into an oarlock, to sophisticated powered rigs capable of trailing devices that measure speed and water temperature at the ball, automatically adjust to water depth, and even offer video cameras that transmit live images to display screens monitored by anglers on the boat above, and are priced accordingly. Full-size manual models from Cannon, Big Jon, Walker and several other companies, most based in the Great Lakes where downrigging was developed, are available and are a good size (and price) to consider if you want to exercise the controlled depth option aboard your boat.
While many Great Lakes fishing boats are so equipped, some fishermen don’t break out the downriggers until about now, knowing this is the time of year when fish are found offshore and suspended at select depths, making them prime targets for the technique. Others find downriggers useful throughout the season for hooking-up to a variety of our favorite gamefish species.
Guide Spotlight
Captain Lee highlights Captain Kyle Buck
Captain Kyle Buck has been using downriggers on his popular Great Lakes Guide Service fleet of charter fishing boats since his first days guiding anglers out of Muskegon a dozen years ago. He fishes the lake from May through October aboard a 31-foot Tiara Sport Fisherman and a 28-foot Sea Ray Amberjack equipped with Cannon downriggers to target Chinook “king” salmon, which can top 30 pounds, as well as steelhead, coho salmon, lake trout and brown trout.
The Chinook actually begin to move toward the harbor mouths in September in preparation for spawning runs, putting the kings in range of his downrigger presentations without requiring long runs offshore to find productive fishing grounds.
For more information about fishing Lake Michigan out of Muskegon, visit Buck’s Great Lakes Guide Service at www.glguideservice.com or call 844-934-7466.
