• Two birds with one stone.

    Tomtom and I planned to do our annual Crappie fishing trip to northern wisconsin. But this time it was going to be a little different. We were going to make a "fishing" pit stop. Before Crappie Fishing, we were going to go Salmon Fishing. We were going to get two very different fishing adventures out of one trip.

    I had just talked to charter boat captain Jim Schlegel who runs a Salmon fishing boat out of Sheboygan Wisconsin, which was right on the way to our northern desination. Jim owns the "Sea Dog" and I did his website oh so many years ago. I provided him some help with his site, and he offered to take us out for some Salmon fishing on the big pond.


    That's Jim on the left, and his First Mate Joe.

    While Salmon fishing with Jim we were going to be on his 35' Luhrs Sportfisherman with a 13' beam. That's wider than the boat we were going to later crappie fish out of is long! His boat has two V8's while the crappie fishing boat has two oars. Yet somehow I knew we were going to catch more fish out of the row boat. They might be smaller, but we were going to catch more out of that row boat.


    I've fished on Lake Michigan for Salmon before, but never out of Sheboygan. The Sheboygan River runs though this very nice little town and out into Lake Michigan. Jim's boat is docked right on the river.



    I'm used to going miles out to fish on Lake Michigan. But as you can see, this is how close we fished to the shore.

    The river's waters are dark as it enter's the clear waters of Lake Michigan. The dark and muddy water provides food and cover for Alewife. As we slowly motored out of the river and into Lake michigan, we could see Alewives jumping up out of our prop wash. The river was thick with them. Birds swooped down to feed on the Alewives we stirred up.


    If you look close, you can see the Alewives jumping clear out the water.

    The fishing was awesome. We fished for about two hours and we got 11 Chinook Salmon in the boat. They ranged from 10 to 20 pounds, with one exception. The only small Chinook we caught was about 5 pounds, which I later smoked:

    Mmmm, good.

    Our first fish came in duing a triple header. This was not unusual, we had a couple double headers later on also. As we trolled through where the murky water met the clear water, we got hits. The fishing was great. What was even funnier was every time we caught a fish, Jim would start screaming, "fish on", "let's go", "we got a gopher", and he would just go on and on. You should be able to hear some of it in the video below. Seems he was more excited when we got a hit than we were. He's really a great guy and we had a heck of a lot of fun on this trip.


    This video is of the Triple Header. We had three fish on at the same time although the video only starts after I get done catching the one I pulled in. I turned the camera on just after we put my fish in the cooler so you don't see it. I screwed up the net and the rod while catching my fish. Luckily we had another net.



    Fish on way in.


    Fish in net.


    Captain Jim taking photos of this great catch.

    After our Salmon fishing adventure, Tomtom and I continued North in Wisconsin to our first favorite crappie fishing lake. It's a small, private access only lake we've fished for almost 30 years. You can say that this is the original spawning ground of Crappie.com. This is the lake that turned us on to Crappie fishing thus inspiring the start of this very site.

    That's our friends duck hunting boat in the foreground. We fish out of the little one in the back.

    We fish this lake with only a row boat and no electronics. That's it. In fact, this is the first year we added any sort of equiptment to the process. Tomtom added a swivel seat with a seat back. I guess this means we're getting old.
    Tomtom rows around the lake trolling two rods behind the boat, each with a pencil bobber and a jig. I cast out the front of the boat for Bass and Northern Pike. Once he catchs fish, I drop the Bass rod and pick up the Crappie rod. That's been the routine for 30 years.

    I guess there is another change to the routine. Now instead of using a short rod that I'd cast when Tomtom got into the crappie, I dangle a twelve foot rod out the front of the boat while we are trolling. Fishing in the South had taught me to use these long rods, and by gosh they work.

    Getting out 12 foot in front of our little 10 foot row boat has really helped get more fish into the boat. We were so busy we could not believe it. We calculated the count went like this, 20 Crappie, 10 Northern Pike, 10 Bass and 10 Bluegill. Not bad for only a couple hours work!

    Nice Bluegills.

    And no, we're not going to share where this lake is. There's no public access to it anyway. We released all the fish we caught so we could enjoy it another day. It was so much fun.

    If you want to contact Jim Schlegel to book yourself a trip, here's his website. http://fishsheboygan.com/
    He also post reports here on Crappie.com: http://www.crappie.com/crappie/salmo...-dog-charters/

    Oh gee, I almost forgot to post some pictures of Tomtom and I with some of those big Salmon, here you go:


    These fish were not released!
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    Comments 8 Comments
    1. ready2fish's Avatar
      ready2fish -
      Looks like another great time on the water and a good story to go with it
    1. Billbob's Avatar
      Billbob -
      sweet trip
    1. Speckanator's Avatar
      Speckanator -
      Great article as usual!
    1. gabowman's Avatar
      gabowman -
      A trip to remember for alooooong time! Congrats.
    1. NYHellbender's Avatar
      NYHellbender -
      Nice fish, and that Chinook looks tasty. You would be all set with a few beers and some Wisconsin Cheese n' crackers.
    1. yankee doodler's Avatar
      yankee doodler -
      Maybe you won't share, but I bet TomTom can be bribed. Great article and nice pics, Ed.
    1. Slab's Avatar
      Slab -
      Just show him a shiny object and Tomtom would prolly take you there.
    1. Hookin'&Cookin''s Avatar
      Hookin'&Cookin' -
      great article Slab , another great story about the friends we make through this site
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