Reddog Sportfishing

Kincardine, Ontario -
Oh the memories, long   days fishing, 1 or 2 hits, always rough water, memories I wish I could forget.
Well things have changed there in the last several years and with stocking reductions through-out the Great lakes Hot Spot fishing is the only way to go!
Kincardine boasts of one of the premier hot spots for spring salmon in the Great Lakes even rivaling Lake Ontario's Niagara Bar.
In 99 Kincardine boasted of limit catches of salmon and trout almost on a daily basis.

Local Charter captains regularly landed over 20 king salmon in a morning. It's been several years since we have put numbers like that up during the spring season.
Kincardine has just installed new ramps this past winter and while the ramp is free, during the spring derby, parking and mooring  is a premium.
We concentrated our efforts northerly towards the Bruce Generating station fishing in 160 to 190' of water. Our best action was between 44' and 80' down.  When the action slowed and the VHF radio was full of bored chatter we changed tactics and fished high.  An array of top water methods were employed from flatlines, planerboards  to Slide Diver and Dipsey Divers. All were effective as we landed quite a varied creel from kings and coho salmon  to rainbow and Atlantic Salmon. Lures ranged from Eppinger Flutterchucks, Lure King Damn Ugly's and Nasty Boys. Other lures were Silver Fox Magnum and Silver Streaks. Plugs seemed ineffective the one exception was a White and blue Lyman

Colour combinations were diverse with black / chartreuse  and black/ purple doing the most damage on the first day deep.  When we changed tactics the brighter colours Fluorescent red/pearl and silver orange produced the bulk of the creel. Some very strange and interesting tape designs were concocted and worked quite well.

Not as familiar with the local hot spots we experimented moving in and out with varying depths, lead lengths and lure speeds. 

A faster troll worked better for our boat in the 3.3 mph area while others trolled quite slow.
Day 1 of the derby produced over 400 salmon. Day 2 produced over 500 salmon! Not bad for an area that I had given up on years ago!!!

Will the stocking reductions of the Michigan DEC effect this spring time hot spot? Indications and discussions with local anglers seem to suggest that the king fishing has improved in the last few years, but another factor will have to be weighed in also. The pending closing of the Bruce Nuclear Station. With the reduction of the warm water outflow will Kincardine continue to maintain its spring Chinook hotspot status
Only time will tell!