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Fished Friday night offshore 80-120 fow going 1/2 with a small laker.  Decided to switch things up in the morning and go harbor patrol for staging fish.  Ended up running into a pod of kings and had a bonus steelhead.  200 copper and riggers on the bottom with moonshine and dolphin spoons took the most hits.  Also had a hit on blue bubble f/f and a gold plug that took the 10 lb steelie.  6 color with goldilocks took the jack.  Final tally was 4/6 on silvers with 2 drum (1 15 lbs that took the cooper for a ride…big letdown).  Kings were 17 14 and 4 lbs.  All out hits were in a cluster and the bite was steady and lasted well into the morning.  

We were the only ones out there on harbor patrol spare for a guy in a tiller in questionable weather.  Everyone passed us to go offshore for what sounded like a trout bite.

Great job!

Awesome job. Should of went there instead of offshore I guess.

Very nice!

Nice box of fish !

Adipose intact. Natural kings...good to see

Yes, all fish were natural  except for the steelhead, maybe 1 more…bigger kings were natural males.  USFWS was at the cleaning station running their tests on them.

Wow nice job and great report! It certainly is that time of year. 

reel wrote:

Adipose intact. Natural kings...good to see

Possibly. Due to the pandemic, the 2020 yearclass of kings didn't get clipped. So ALL 2 year old kings, regardless of hatchery vs wild, will have an intact adipose fin. Pretty nice fish for a 2 year old, if that's the case. Or it could be a wild fish.

Just as a reminder for people, there's very very little wild reproduction of kings in Indiana. So if you catch kings in the tribs this fall that have adipose fins, the odds are good that they are hatchery fish from the 2020 yearclass that didn't get clipped

Do you have any idea whether this is the case for Michigan 2020 year class kings? We have been catching a ton of 8-12 lb kings with adipose fins in st joe.

SteveK wrote:

Do you have any idea whether this is the case for Michigan 2020 year class kings? We have been catching a ton of 8-12 lb kings with adipose fins in st joe.

The only state that got their chinooks clipped before the shutdowns was Illinois.  So that's about 180K out of 2.4 million kings in the 2020 yearclass that actually got the adipose clip as intended  - less than 8% of the total lakewide stocking