Chinook Salmon Fishing on Lake Michigan

Why Lake Michigan is still the king lake

Chinook were dropped into Lake Michigan in 1966 to eat an alewife population that had gotten so far out of hand that dead bait was windrowed on Chicago beaches. It worked, and it built a charter economy from Waukegan to Charlevoix. Sixty years later the alewife base is a fraction of what it was, the stocking numbers have been cut repeatedly, and the fishery still produces more king salmon than any other water in the country.

What changed is where the fish live. When alewives were thick, kings fed at 40 feet in July. Now they follow a thinner, deeper, more scattered bait supply, and you should plan on fishing 70 to 110 feet down through the middle of summer over water that is 250 feet or better. That is the single biggest adjustment for anyone coming back to this lake after a decade away.

Reading the thermocline

Kings want 50 to 55 degrees and they will not stay long in anything warmer than 58. In June the whole water column is cold enough and the fish spread out from 30 to 80 feet. Through July the surface climbs into the high 60s and the thermocline sets up between 50 and 80 feet. A hard east wind will blow that warm layer offshore and pull 48-degree water right up against the beach — an upwelling — and for one or two days the kings will be in 60 feet of water four hundred yards off the pierheads. Watch surface temperature maps every morning in July; the fish move faster than the reports do.

A downrigger-mounted temperature probe pays for itself the first week. Surface temperature tells you nothing about where the bait is. What you want is the depth where the water goes from 58 to 52 in about ten feet — that band is where you put half your spread.

The August staging run

From roughly the third week of August, mature kings begin gathering off the river mouths they were planted in or ran up as smolts: the Pere Marquette at Ludington, the Big Manistee, the Betsie at Frankfort, the Muskegon, the St. Joseph, and the Wisconsin harbors from Kewaunee south. They stop feeding hard and start behaving territorially, which changes the program. Slow to 1.9 to 2.2 mph, put more meat in the water — flashers and flies rather than spoons — and fish the first two hours of daylight in 60 to 120 feet of water within a mile of the pierheads.

This is the window that makes pier and shore anglers relevant on the big lake. Once the fish push into the harbors in early September, a heavy spoon or a glow-body cast off the north pier at first light is a real shot at a twenty-pounder.

How it differs from Huron and Ontario

Lake Huron’s chinook fishery collapsed with its alewives in 2003 and never came back at scale; Huron kings today are mostly wild-spawned fish, fewer and thinner. Lake Ontario grows heavier average fish on a healthier alewife base but has far fewer ports and a shorter offshore run. Lake Michigan sits in between: a big, deep, west-coast-of-Michigan trolling grid with enough water to spread out on and enough fish to stay honest. It is also the lake where you are most likely to end a July day with a mixed box — a king, two steelhead and a laker — because all four cold-water species share the same temperature band out there.

Boat and safety notes

An eight-mile offshore run in a 17-foot aluminum boat is a different activity than trolling a harbor. Lake Michigan builds a steep, short chop in a northwest blow and it does it fast. Carry a handheld VHF, wear an inflatable when you are alone in the cockpit, and file a float plan with someone on shore. Surface water that reads 68 degrees in August is 47 degrees at 70 feet, and an upwelling can drop the surface twenty degrees overnight.