Some people would say there are five species of salmon and trout in Lake Michigan. King salmon, also known as chinook salmon grow to the largest size. Cohos are the original Pacific salmon that were long ago stocked in the lake. Steelhead trout and brown trout now accompany lake trout, the only species of the five that has always been at home in the Great Lakes.

I say there are more kinds of trout and salmon than the above quintet. Sure, if you did DNA analysis of the fish, you'd come up with only five species, but if you base the count on behavior, location, size and other mannerisms, I can think of at least a half-dozen other kinds of salmon and trout swimming in the big lake.

A lake trout hugging the bottom in 120 feet of water in the summer is much different than the same trout in November when it's cuddling up to the rocky reef just outside the Port of Indiana to spawn. Brown trout are a different animal most of the year than they are in March when they swarm by the thousands into the few warmwater areas in the southern basin.

Hoosier big-lake fans have two kinds of cohos: spring cohos and summer cohos, and they have both Skamania steelhead and the "other" kinds. To top it all off, there are three kinds of chinooks based on when and where they are found.

So a Lake Michigan forecast article is more than just a compila8006424720tion of stocking information and other details on the five different species. It needs to touch all the behaviors of each species, especially as the seasons progress from winter to spring to summer and into the fall months.

BROWN TROUT
The Lake Michigan season begins with brown trout. Of all the big lake's species (regardless of how you count them), browns are the ones with the highest water temperature comfort zone. Perhaps this is why they seem to be the fish most adept at finding the places in the lake with the warmest water when the winter cold plummets the water in the main lake down to the freezing mark.

Shore-anglers at the BP-Amoco discharge in Whiting brave ice-covered rocks to get at the fish in January and February. The public access site where shore-fishing is allowed inside the Port of Indiana coughs up browns for early-season anglers, as does the mouth of Trail Creek and Burns Waterway.

As soon as the ice leaves the lake and boat access opens (usually around early March), boaters will join in the early-season fun. In addition to this, brown trout fishing has never been better.

For decades, there were no brown trout stocked in Indiana. Four years ago, that changed when an agreement was arranged to get a truckload (25,000 to 30,000) of brown trout fingerlings from Illinois to stock into Indiana's part of Lake Michigan. The initial stocking was made at Whiting in Lake County. The next year, the browns were planted at Michigan City in LaPorte County. Porter County lies between these two locations and benefits from both stockings. Subsequent stockings continue to alternate between the two locations.