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The lakers were in thick outside Burns Ditch yesterday. The crank bait natural colored flicker shad I was trolling was the hot bait. It did not take long to get two in the live well. I saw the shore guys doing pretty well on the lake side of the wall, too. After several laker releases, I switched to different baits and went to 30' to try for coho, etc., but still hooked another laker on the flicker shad I had not brought in yet. Would have liked a coho or two, but I'm not complaining.

Nice! surprised you didnt end up with a coho or two.

Thanks for the report.

Thanks for the tip on lure selection. That would not have been my choice. So Today, tried the closest thing to it and used size 7 black/ silver shad raps on dipseys near the bottom at the mouth of the ditch. Went 6 for 8 on Lakers. No coho to be found though

Thanks for the report. Are there certain conditions that cause the fish to hang out at the mouth of the ditch? Always thought the reef was the place to be this time of year.

This is the first time I've seen them so congregated in one spot in rather shallow water. There was lots of baitfish on the screen but only found one alewife in the bellys. Last year at this time, coho were in the same spot. This time, I ran red thin fins on the surface without even a bump. I was out at the reef two weeks ago and it was dead. Marked very few and nobody was getting them jigging. It's interesting that another post on this site caught them at Cal Harbor along the rocks which is 30' I believe. Every fish we hooked was on the bottom, but only 15' of water. Nothing on flat lines with the same lure.

That’s fun fishing when the set up like that. I think they are post spawn fish that move in when there’s bait around the mouth of the ditch like that. I can remember it happening 4 or 5 years ago when the water was lower and wading inside the break wall and them hitting spoons and spinners really aggressively. I think it’s more shad than alewives this time of year.

A number of years ago we found them on the beach east of the ditch. They were tight to the beach. At that time we ran planner boards. We would run it with-in 10' of the water line. Had rubber band releases. As trolling by the line would drag lightly on the sand. The rubber band would stretch & go back & stretch. But when we had a hit. It would stretch about 2' then break. It was crazy. The farthest out rod kept doing the work. Didn't matter which bait we had there it just had to be inside the first sand bar. It was a time to remember.

For any one still going out, the lakers are still in thick at the Burns Ditch mouth and natural color crank baits are still the hot bait. I left the Portage Marina at 1, today, and was back by 2. I spent about 15 minutes outside the Ditch with 3 on, two of which went in the live well. I figured that from then on all I would be doing is catching and releasing lakers. Since the overflow port on my live well was frozen closed along with my hands and a snow storm predicted, I packed it in. I might have stayed longer if I saw any of the other boats landing something besides lakers.

What do you do with the Lake Trout that you keep? Grill? Smoke? Other?