Great Lakes Salmon And Trout

Remembering the Eye in the Sky Venerable salmon reporter John Oravec first spread the word through In-Fisherman about “eye-in-the-sky” tactics 16 years ago, soon after daily satellite maps of the Great Lakes first appeared on the Internet. “Before the captains of Lake Ontario begin to apply any seat-of-the-pants savvy for finding the stable offshore honey holes, we go to coastwatch.msu.edu for a surface-temp map with a GPS overlay,” Oravec says. “It saves time and gas. With the boat on a trailer, you can chase the best water more effectively than many a gas-guzzling charter boat can.” Satellite maps show surface temperatures and reveal where the coldest surface water was when the photo was taken (so, get up early and get on the Net before pulling out of the driveway). Coldwater masses can move or dissipate quickly. The spots representing the shortest distances between warmwater and coldwater masses are the places to circle on a satellite map. That’s where the best thermal bars and other “invisible structures” exist near the surface of the lake. The “stability-zone” angler uses satellite maps, too. But he might circle the spots where coldwater masses appear closest to shore, then go there and use down temps to determine whether salmon are inshore or in pockets along the way out. If 49°F to 52°F water can’t be found anywhere above bottom, it’s time to head well offshore, to the largest area of stable water in the lake, hunting along the way. Satellite maps tell us what’s happening on the surface, but the zone of stability primarily encompasses a buffered body of water beginning somewhere under the surface and extending through the middle of the water column, often all the way to the bottom. Temperature gauges on downriggers or self-contained, depth-probing thermometers become necessities in the search for the stability zone.

The Zone Of Stability

“The closer you are to the middle of the lake, the more stable it becomes,” Chmura says. Within a few days after a storm, the water warming again in the harbors, he heads for the open sea, dropping a probe every few miles on the way out, looking for stable water. “After an upwelling, when the surface inshore is 42°F to 49°F, it starts warming up as you head toward midlake,” he says. “I graph that temperature incline in reverse, watching the 49°F reading drop progressively deeper as I head out. Where it levels out, I’ve found the zone I want to explore. It could be in any depth range where it occurs, but it’s generally 70 to 80 feet down during the heat of summer.

“On the other hand, when the lake is ice cold on one side, it’s the opposite on the other. The cold side is always better than the hot side, because you don’t have to fish as deep. The deeper you go, the less control you have. I caught kings last year 300 feet down, a few as deep as 350 feet, and a lot of them were over 20 pounds. But you can’t fish two downriggers that deep. Currents tangle the cables no matter what you do. Sometimes you can only have one ball in the zone on the warm side, where you have to go deeper to hit fish.”

A signpost is always waiting out there. “Water reading 49°F is my home,” he says. “It’s a critical indicator. The depth at the point where the water hits 49°F can direct you to salmon. When the 49°F mark is close to the surface and close to shore, count on kings being in the harbor. When it’s deep, head out toward midlake and hunt for the spot where it begins to level off. The zone of stability begins where the 49°F temperature band stops getting deeper, where it levels off and remains relatively equidistant from the surface. That’s where you want to start hunting for baitfish with sonar.

“When I find a feeding zone, I start with one lure below the 49°F reading and two lures above it on each side, using 3 downriggers and 4 wire-line rigs with Dipsy Divers. On the big boards, I’ve got one copper-line rig and one leadcore rig off each side, for a total of four more presentations. To get 60 feet down takes 15 colors of lead, so if the 49°F mark is 50 feet down, I run one with 15 colors and one with 10 or 12 colors to bracket that zone, at 2.2 mph.“ Chmura uses 27-pound leadcore, with 40 feet of 20-pound fluorocarbon on the business end.

“Steelhead generally stay in the top 20 feet of the water column out in the zone,” he says, “even when the water warms. If you want steelhead, you have to go outside the box that works for kings.” Typical setups for midlake steelhead include longlining minnowbaits or pulling a small dodger—Howie Fly rigs on straight mono with in-line weights or behind a couple colors of leadcore. Primarily, these rigs are trailed behind boards, Dipsy Divers, or both.