For less deep fishing but still lots of fun the silvers in Mills Bay are about 30-60 feet deep, you can use a small clamp on downrigger. These fish were running around 12" last May and tasted great. Here's my report from last year:
May 27-29,2000
From Mike Carey
My boys and I spent three days in search of the lunker lake trout and Chinook that reside in this huge lake. I had to set up my boat to fish deep, rigging up my electric downrigger and swapping out my small lake-troll downriggers. We fished each morning from 6am to about 10am, when the wind would pick up and begin to blow us around (plus by then the kid's attention span was being stretched to the limits). I ran one rigger down to the bottom, going progressively deeper, starting at 100 feet and going to 230 feet. No deeper only because my fish finder stops at 240 feet. We tried plugs, hoochies, and large spoons. The second line was a small downrigger so it never went deeper than 60 feet, we used it for the kokanee and trout.
Had no luck with the big boys. No strikes at all. Even so, I'm pumped to try again. It was pretty cool trolling down so deep. The silver action was good. We caught several in the 12" range on small silver spoons and super-duppers. I don't like using gang gear as I want to feel the fight, but we did notice other fishermen doing well on silvers with gang gear. We did just fine without. The fish tasted great with a nice firm, red flesh. They bite very soft on the downrigger, but did hook themselves OK. We also caught a powerful 16" rainbow on a surface spoon 75 feet behind the boat. A wonderful time was had by all.
Good luck!
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