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Went out today and fished the Illinois side in the 60 to 70 FoW where we did good last year this time. Should have known when we couldnt launch out of Hammond to just turn around and go home but launched out of Whiting. Lake was beautiful but it would not give up a fish. Fished everywhere from 2 mph to 4 mph and nothing. Figure we need to go north so may hit Northpoint tomorrow and troll South to see if we can find anything.

I fished North of you from 80' to 110' from 4 PM to 8PM yesterday and got nothing except a small laker. I kept thinking I needed to shallower. Doesn't sound like it would have done any good. If it's any consolation, going deeper yesterday wouldn't have done you any good, either.

Bummer...since i drive 116 mi use this...dead on most times. If i cant get to yellow i stay home

Fish are there - just gotta get out a little deeper unfortunately.

M Notice: I view those sub-surface temp maps with about the same confidence as I do the weather forecast for two weeks from next Monday. There is a degree of accuracy with the surface temp maps since those are taken from satellites and can directly assess the temp of the lake. Even these aren't perfect due to clouds and apparently other factors I don't understand because I've found them incorrect on many occasions. But down below?

As far as I know there's only weather buoys capable of measuring and transmitting underwater temperature profiles on our end of the lake at Michigan City, St. Joe, Michigan and way up north of Chicago at Wilmette. That's a long stretch from MC to Wilmette so I can only "surmize" those yellow, red and blue shades shown on the map are colored as much using the SWAG method as from actual measures. (SWAG meaning "scientific wild ass guess."

If I'm wrong, I hope I'm wrong -- let me know. I do know there's not a bunch of government or university operated boats out there - or a fleet of submarines or stationary buoys anchored every few miles to record temperature profiles in Lake Michigan.

Anyone know more about this, let us all know.

Bnature, they use the same government submarines to count the alewives.

It is a predictive model and should be viewed as nothing more than a general guideline.

How deep Dirty? I have been fishing from approximately 85 ft of water to 130 ft pretty much due north out of Whitting and its been slow. Do I need to get deeper? Many thanks in advance for your replies.

From everything I am reading you want to be in 110+ FoW and I would say be down 50 to 80 feet. out of St. Joe we were running dipsies out 120 to 180 Ft and got the king on the 120 and coho on the 180s.

I agree - at least 110+. Hard to say exactly how deep. Wish I could prefish to figure that out!