One of the predictors of how good the spring coho action will be along Indiana's shores is how soon in the fall the cohos stocked by the state of Michigan migrate down to the south end of the lake. In late October and November, as the northern reaches of the lake cool down below the temperature cohos find comfortable, the 2-year-old cohos (one year in the hatchery and one year in the lake) will migrate south.

Die-hard anglers from Indiana ports who have yet to winterize their boats can intercept these 2-year-old fish, now measuring about 18 inches in length, by using the same lures and tactics which pay off in the early spring. Small, rattling crankbaits get plenty of attention at this time.

Last fall, the fishing for "this year's coho" was the best it had been for many years. That's as solid a predictor on how good the 2007 coho season will likely be.

BROWN TROUT
Decades ago, when Indiana first geared up to produce trout and salmon fingerlings to stock into Lake Michigan, a couple of "facts" reared up to cause the decision-makers to stop raising brown trout for the big lake. One fact is brown trout are more expensive to raise than the other species of trout and salmon. The extra expense comes from how long browns have to stay in the hatchery to grow to the size suitable for stocking. By dumping browns from the program, the money saved could be used to rear additional salmon or steelhead and the hatchery space freed up by eliminating browns meant extra room for the other fish as well.

When Lake Michigan trout and salmon fishing was in its infancy, no one knew what to expect when a batch of brown trout fingerlings were planted in the lake. Would they prosper? Would they die out? Would they stay in the vicinity of where they were stocked or scatter randomly from one end of the lake to another?

To answer these questions, many of the young fish were stocked with one or more of their fins clipped as a sort of "brand" that would allow fisheries biologists to identify the fish once they grew up. A coho missing a right pectoral fin might be from a certain year stocking from Michigan. A brown with a left ventral fin clip might ID that fish as a Wisconsin fish stocked off the Milwaukee shore.

Indiana hired a staff of creel clerks to check the catches made by Indiana's Great Lake anglers. They'd identify the species being caught, weigh them, measure them and check for fin clips. All of this information taken back then became baseline data used to develop management plans for the lake.

One of the things noticed back then was that most of the brown trout Indiana fishermen were catching originated in other states. In some of those early years, only 15 percent of the browns caught in Indiana came from Indiana hatcheries.