Another reason for heavier tackle – if you can’t use downriggers – is the amount of lead needed to put lures where the salmon are. No one can say for sure how deep salmon will be at any one time. Fifty- to 55-degree water can be anywhere from the surface to 150 feet. Both a thermometer and a fathometer will help you pinpoint this level and the fish.

But if you have none of that fancy stuff, remember these figures: four ounces of lead takes a lure down about 10 feet, eight ounces to 20 feet, 12 to 40 feet, 16 to 60 feet and 20 ounces to 80 feet. They’re based on letting out 150 feet of 15-pound-test monofilament from your boat.

Such a load of lead takes some of the zip out of a salmon fight, though, so many anglers opt for the “slip-sinker” devices sold in most local tackle stores. These release the lead when salmon hit, leaving an unweighted line between fisherman and fish. On days like the two previously mentioned, you’d need a good supply of sinkers, obviously.

Other anglers favor the planning devices that work something like airplane wings when pulled through the water. They’re angled to drag trailing lures downward in the water when trolled. These, too, are available in local tackle shops, complete with full directions for their use.

I have seen late-summer salmon take lures right on the surface and I’ve also seen them hang 150 feet down, if lack of wind has allowed the big lakes to stratify – cooler temperatures sinking deeper down. If indications are that fish are much below 80 feet, you’d be better off with the traditional wireline outfits used to take lake trout from deep bottom shoals. Fortunately the fish are seldom that far down.

There are perhaps as many lures purported to catch salmon as there are salmon. Surprisingly enough, when the fish are really hitting, most of these lures will work. But the favorite baits of charterboatmen are Tadpollies, Flatfish, Rapalas, Dardevles, Bayou Specials, Manistee Wobblers, Burke Tail-Spins, Canadian Wonder Spoons, Williams Wabblers and Bolo, Mepps and Hep Spinners.

Silver and silver-blue combinations probably take the most salmon. But fluorescent orange, yellow, white, red-and-white, fluorescent lime-green, gold and combinations of these often work, too.

Generally speaking, as spawning time approaches the salmon schools move even closer to parent streams, becoming more accessible inshore. It’s then that such hotspots as Platte Bay, north of Frankfort around Pointe Betsie, begin to produce large catches and give smaller boats a better chance.

Grand Traverse Bay, particularly along the west arm from Traverse City up to Northpoint, picks up steadily as fall approaches, and Little Traverse Bay off Petoskey switches from a lake trout to a salmon society.

Several relatively uncrowded – and as yet unproven – spots exist in fairly protected waters along Lake Michigan’s Upper Peninsula shoreline. Little Bay de Noc (the nearest large town is Escanaba) hosts returning salmon by September, headed for the Whitefish River. Salmon have been planted in the Big Cedar northeast of Menominee on the Wisconsin line. The Menominee River has salmon, too.

September usually marks the start of spawning runs at Thompson Creek, near Manistique  in the Upper Peninsula. A mixture of early-spawning Alaska strain cohos and regular west coast U.S. fish have been stocked here. Fishing from small boats or while wading off the river mouth is often excellent. St. Martins Bay north of St. Ignace in the Straits on Mackinac is another good bet. The Carp River there hosts one bunch of returning salmon, a new access road has been built, and fishermen have been ignoring it. In prevailing winds, St. Martins offers good protection inshore for smaller boats.

Inland lakes through which salmon must pass to reach spawning streams shouldn’t be overlooked, either. Both coho and chinook will enter these in many cases by late September and passage of fish continues through October. Better bets include Muskegon, Manistee Lake at Manistee, Loon and Platte Lakes on the Platte River (the river itself is usually closed to fishing until late fall since egg-taking operations are underway at the upstream hatchery), and Lake Charlevoix and Boyne City.

We should say a word about pesticide levels, too, since DDT use by agricultural interests has found its way into fish here as well as elsewhere around the country.

The number of salmon usually eaten by most individual fishermen and their families each year isn’t enough to cause any worry over pesticides – although levels in fresh fish of the mature size make them unmarketable according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Most of this pesticide residue concentrates in the fat of the fish, and by cutting away the belly flanks, skin and meat along the backbone you can eliminate most of it.  Practically all the remainder is gone after the fat drips away from a broiling fillet.

So there’s no need to avoid eating your catch, at least according to the best studies to date. Of course the salmon are delicious.

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