Lake Superior Shakedown

We had been looking for a time with cooperating weather so we could go up to Lake Superior and try out the boat and equipment. Turns out the weather was nearly perfect and we had a great time learning how to handle the boat in federally controlled waters (navigation buoys, etc) and using the rigs for fishing these waters (downriggers, dipsy divers, and planer boards).


Barker's Marina
This is a very nice marina located in Superior Wisconsin. We unloaded the boat about 200 yards away from the marina and tied up at a dock we rented for a day. The nice thing about this marina is that it also has a motel and restaurant so it was "one stop shopping" for us.


Friday Afternoon - Getting ready to go out
Matt is on the left and John is on the right. As much as we could, we rigged the lines before we went out. On the back you can see the Cannon electric downriggers and some of the rods. In Minnesota waters we are each allowed to have two lines out so, for us that was a total of 8 lines.


Matt

John

Chris

Duluth Lift Bridge

This is one of the beautiful landmarks and park (Canal) in Duluth. The bottom of the bridge is about 10 feet off the water and with our radio antenna and planer board mast, we cleared the bridge by about 2". If you need the bridge to lift you would need to call the bridge master and request the bridge to lift. Since we had the radio on all the time, this was common radio traffic.


Jetty Lighthouse

As you pass under the bridge and through the jetty you will notice the small lighthouse on the north side. It would probably be called more of a beacon than a lighthouse.


Planer Board

The value of this picture is to show how we set up the planer board. It starts with the planer mast which holds nylon string that is connected to the planer board. The planer pulls against the string. On this string you attach a "release" which connects the fishing line to the planer board line. The fishing line is played out until you are at the distance behing the planer board you want and then you attach the line to the release. The release also gets attached to the planer board string. The result is a setup which looks like this. We had a planer board on each side of the boat.


Container ship

There was a fair amount of traffic from ships such as this. Couldn't always tell what they were carrying. We know some carried taconite or grain. They travel in a shipping lane. From the traffic we listened to they travel about 6 miles/hour.

Downrigger

Here we are setting up one of the two downriggers. The down rigger is basically a winch which pays out a steel cable connected to a lead weight; the downrigger ball. We also used releases to attach fishing lines along each line. This is a process called "stacking" the downrigger. The line gets prepared using either a dodger or flasher and then a lure. As you might guess, there are tons of possible combinations. We stacked the second down rigger at different depths to complement the first one. Also, as the depth changed we often raised or lowered the downrigger and adjusted the lines.

Another Ship

There's a significance to these pictures which I'll explain later.


GPS/Fish Locator

We have had this boat about three months. One of the key improvements was this device. On the left side of this split screen you can see we were in 126 feet of water and the temperature of the water at the surface was 65.9 degrees F. We regularly could see the downrigger ball as well as the dipsy divers. Here you can see one of the downrigger balls at a little under 80 feet. On the right side of the screen you can see the trail of the boat, I think it's called "breadcrumbs". You can also see the depth profile which seems pretty close to the depth indicated on the left screen. It shows our trolling speed at 1.8 mph and finally it shows navigation buoys and also special notices. Here there is a pump house crib that will snag lots of fishing and downrigging equipment if you don't pay attention. Finally towards the bottom of the picture you can see two lines which mark the shipping channel.

Planer Board Mast

The reels on either side of the base of the mast pay out the nylon string to either the port or starboard planer through the pulleys on the top of the mast to eyebolts on the planer board.

Eight Lines Out!

It's a little hard to get a picture of all eight lines. Here you can see six. The two dipsy lines are in rodholds further forward on the boat. One of the fun accomplishments of the day was learning more about rigging each of the lines, how to set the releases, setting the lines out, adjusting them once they were out and pulling them in when we were ready to go home.

Friday Night

We were about 10 miles from the marina; about five miles out from the lift bridge and about five miles from the marina to the lift bridge. The convenience was to tie up the boat and walk to the motel. Here's John (Chris is in the boat) getting the cover on the boat.

Saturday Morning
We were on the boat by about 6:30 a.m. ready to spend about 12 hours on the lake but we hadn't planned for fog. What makes for a pretty nice picture also makes for a different challenge fishing.

Getting out to the lake

There are two ways we could get out to the lake, either through a jetty in Wisconsin or through the jetty by the Duluth Lift Bridge. We first tried the one on the Wisconsin side and as soon as we went past the jetty, the fog closed in around us. We turned around and decided to try the lift bridge.

On our way to the lift bridge

Again, I like this picture. Here John is looking at a fog bank north of us.

The Duluth/Superior Bridge
Here the fog could be considered tolerable. Visibility is at least 1/2 mile so we continued on to the bridge.

A long morning

I would guess about 8:00 a.m. we passed under the lift bridge and out onto the lake. Although it was somewhat foggy, visibility seemed acceptable to us. We put out our lines and started trolling towards the Lester River. Our logic was that if it started to get foggy, we would turn around and head back towards Duluth. This would work if the fog was moving to the east and it turns out it was moving to the west. We did turn around and trolled back towards Duluth. Along the way we heard both fog horns from ships as well as train horns. We decided it would be prudent to not only head towards Duluth but also to ensure we were out of the shipping lane. The GPS did a great of helping us navigate close to shore. We trolled for about an hour and the fog started lifting to the point where we could set out lines and resume fishing. It was really an interesting experience . . . hmmm, maybe there's a priority for adding radar?

Heading in

Here we are heading southwest back towards Duluth. The weather was great and the winds were calm. For these two days we put about 14 hours on the boat.

Back trough the lift bridge

Ready to go home
We are pulling stuff out of the boat and laying stuff inside the boat so we can put the cover on and go home.

I think we all came away from this trip feeling really good about the boat and fishing rigs. Although the fishing was poor, the experience was great and I think we all look forward to more trips with our families. Jeff and Bridget had made weekend plans, so he wasn't able to go with us, but hopefully it will work out so he can go with us next time.

Bob