As a kid I grew up on hunting videos and one of our favorite series “longbeard madness” filmed and produced by Mark and Terry Drury was one Dad and I always looked forward to every year. The idea behind the “madness” is the constant pursuit, the obsession if you will, to learn as much as you can about whatever quarry you’re after. Figuring them out, following them through the season whether open or closed just to learn the habits of these creatures is what we live for. These salmon are no different and in our opinion they keep things interesting in a lake that is heavily populated with Lake Trout which make up for a majority of our catch.
The nomadic habits of these fish keep you on your toes and location of schools will change day to day within a general area. We are constantly watching our Lowrance HDS carbon units for evidence of any present food source. Blobs of bugs or bait over open water can usually mean salmon nearby. Covering water is key and we are in a constant search mode in hopes of striking gold (or silver I suppose) which will reveal themselves in spontaneous savage strikes.
The madness never ends, Dad and I love strategy! We are always trying new baits, colors, speeds, attractors etc. and attempting to develop theories as to the what’s and why’s at the end of each trip. Things sometimes make no sense at all and quite honestly that’s the reason we love this game. There is always something to learn. If we had it figured out the challenge would be lost and we probably would have to start fishing for something else!
Dad is a master at the craft, but particularly good with bait and color selection. People want to know what we are using, what color? The truth is we don’t know either but we let the fish tell us what they want which changes day to day and year to year. Dad will burn through a lot of spoons and stick baits until he hits the right one and it drives us insane! We have lures that will work one year and two years later we still cannot manage to catch a fish on it. Now that is landlocked madness at it’s finest right there.
Stomach content is also important and can tip you off as to where the fish has been spending a majority of it’s recent time feeding. Bugs, bugs, bugs…these salmon will almost always take advantage of any nice hatch of insects and will gladly gorge themselves on the plentiful little morsels. Anglers get caught up on temperature and we constantly need to remind ourselves that these fish will feed out of temperature and can be found just under the surface if forage is available in water up to 70 degrees.
We are seeing a spike in activity as we typically do in late July and we have been putting our clients on some nice fish. We have high hopes for August which is typically our best salmon bite. The Lake Trout fishing has been exceptional as well with many fish over ten pounds being boated. We will keep you “hooked-up” with fishing reports as the Landlocked Madness continues.
Thanks for reading Anglers!
