SALMON SEASON GUESSES

[23rdtactical]

Anyone heard or willing to speculate on the quality or quantity of salmon fishing this coming year? I personally had a dismal year last year. weather was a contributing factor.

[RedRider]

my speculation is the coho bite is awesome already.

[fishoil]

My speculation is you put your boat away to early last year. The October salmon fishing more than made up for the less than spectacular summer.

[SteveO]

I thought the KD rocked (what I remember of it)

Bigger but fewer fish is my guess this year ...

[Deleted]

There's no denying it was a grind at least thru the month of June last year. But there were a lot of big fish out there.
July thru Sept just got better and better. Basing my thoughts on the late summer and fall fishery we had last year, I'm going to guess numbers will be up a bit and for size we will see a lot of 13-17 pound cookie cutter kings with the 20+ pounder being a lot less common this year. For steelhead I think numbers and size will both be way down from last year.
Then again, I'm usually wrong...

That's what I love about our fishery, we never know whats going to be out there until we go find out for ourselves.

[saugeye]

I agree. You don't know until the reports start coming in. Although everyone knows it will most likely be a late start

[salty]

I heard from a very reliable source that because the long cold winter the fish will be BIG this year, I'll tend to agree with him but can let you know for sure in a few months.

[BlackOut]

I had a great year, enjoyed fishing with some friends an got on a few great boats... I'm looking forward to the same again

An I predict BIG kings

[aquaholic]

Only certain things are for sure ......

Gillian will attract bad luck
Scrapper will bring the wind
SteveO will fish only under high sunlight and with MEAT
Red Rider will always have a red boat
Jackpot will have rainbows at the top of his catch wish list
AND
We will keep chasing salmon, big or small, few or many

May everyone have a safe and enjoyable 2014 season ......

[Scrapper]

Can't argue with any of that. Always safety first. Good luck everybody. No predictions from me, they always backfire.

[muskymike275]

It's going to be a great year! I predict full coolers of cold beer good friends to share it with. Maybe even some screaming drags from some slob salmon. Either way I'm ready for it as soon as July gets here!

[gilligan]

well heres my .02 and its only a theory, I think with the colder winters comes bigger fish,the bait fish get lethargic,were salmon are in there comfort zone with 39 to 40 deg water,all the bait and warm water and oxygenated water is on the bottom and the area that there in become more condensed and easier prey for the salmon,we were getting nice salmon in the fall on 2011 up to 15lb salmon and boat loads of bait from the 2010 year class I thought we would have some nice fish,that spring the fish only put on a couple pounds. There was only 14 fish over 20lbs during the 2012 kd salmon tournament. If you compare the average temp through the winter and the time it takes to warm up coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/avg-sst.php?lk=m&yr=0 and the kd results www.kdsalmon.com/ year by year the colder winters seems to produce bigger fish. Since ive been watch down temps weve always had a 40 deg pocket of water in the southern end and one in the nourthern end, this year it disappeared late January www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/glcfs.php?lake=m&ext=vwt&type=N&hr=00. Like i said this is just a theory,but i think will have nice fish again this year.

As for the numbers of fish,I think were far more dependent on the wild fish at this point in are fishery than we realize,will know this year as all stocked fish are fin clipped were last year every thing but the 3 1/2 yr olds were clipped,70 to 80 % of the fish we caught last year that were 2 1/2 and younger were wild,in a tournament in sheboygan were the was a fish biologist taking samples and checking fish and the creel guys that we ran into were saying the same thing as well as the other fisherman that were looking were saying the same thing,I think when we here 50% are wid is on the low side. on the bright side I theres plenty of lakers to be had

ps that was a lot of spell check

[salty]

Tony- change your password, someone hacked into your account

[Deleted]

Your starting to sound like thirsty whaler, lose that sh*t.

[greybeard]

Gilligan,

Thanks for making the effort and taking the time to research the old data and sharing your assessment. I'm not sure what to expect re numbers of chins this year but around MKE last fall a decent number of 14-16# were boated. Thus I would expect a few lunkers to be around. Last years fish boated average was same as previous year but fewer trips due to weather.

Grey Beard