About four years ago, Chmura and his crew were fishing on The Shelf, a startling piece of structure well offshore on the Michigan side. “We were marking fish deeper than we were fishing,” Chmura says. “So I dropped a rig down 200 feet, and we caught fish. I kept going deeper every time out, wondering, what’s the lower limit of all this? After four years, we’ve learned there is no limit. I feel certain that salmon are using the bottom of Lake Michigan, in 900 feet of water. I haven’t been down that deep yet, but I know salmon are down there because I’m fishing down to 470 feet, catching fish and still marking salmon deeper.”
The effort to probe deeper than 400 feet with conventional gear proved difficult. The benthic depths are guarded by powerful, twisting currents. These produce a barrier of sorts—a troller’s nightmare, replete with tangled cannonballs and snapping wire. “If you put two downrigger balls down past 150 feet, they find each other and tangle in the deep currents of the Great Lakes,” Chmura says. “The only way to create a spread of lures is to think laterally. Any additional rigs need to get down at a different angle. I’m getting a second line down there with wire on ocean reels like the Daiwa Dendoh-style Tanacom Bull. The Bull holds 700 yards of 30-pound mono, or 1,100 yards of 60-pound braid. It’s one of very few reels that function at these depths. I spool it up with 30-pound-test Malin wire from Howie’s Tackle.
“Three years ago I approached Rick Laroche and John Williams of Big Jon Sports to see about getting a downrigger with a stronger motor, one with the capacity to lift 24 pounds. I needed a smaller diameter spool for better torque, too. They provided me with a spool that holds 750 feet of cable and they’re designing one now that holds 1,000 feet. They’ve been very helpful in all this, but that’s just the beginning. Fishing this deep requires specialized equipment, and even when you obtain that equipment, you’re forced to fish a thin spread.
“We have to baby these rigs. Dropping and lifting 24 pounds through a liquid medium creates a tremendous amount of stress on equipment. If the cable nicks, you have to trim it back. And, until now, I haven’t been able to read temperature down there. Remote units won’t transmit that far. But Depth Raider is making a down-temp unit I’m putting on my downriggers with 1,000 feet of cable.
“For the past four years, I’ve been catching 6 or 7 additional kings each day, fishing deeper than 300 feet with only one line. Whatever works up on top of The Shelf in the morning is what I drop down deep in the afternoon. You have to feel for the bottom. If you’re not near bottom, you’re not going to catch kings. I stop catching lakers at about 250 feet. I’m not bringing up any juvenile kings from 300 feet, either. The only fish that deep, in Lake Michigan, are big kings. At about 9 to 10 a.m., it’s typical for that shallow bite to shut down. I head out into deeper water at that point.”
