The Tale of Two Trout

I don’t know what happened the first ten days of September. It was like the giant trout in North America went nuts. Not only the one had I eluded to in my last blog, but another beast from Canada that was nudging the fifty pound mark. When the dust settles and the IGFA shakes out all the details, both the world record Brown Trout and Rainbow Trout may have fallen in the same week.

The story of the new Brown record has been covered ad nauseum so I won’t bore you with the details. It was even mentioned on the local nightly news. Wow, they never mention fish or fishing on the nightly news. They must have an angle to work it into Obama’s Health Care Plan.

Anyway, for us in the Great Lakes Region this was a day to lay claim to a very prestigious title. The world record Brown Trout was taken from our own Lake Michigan. Since Rip Collins shattered the 40 pound mark with a world record from the Little Red River, Arkansas has held the record since 1992.

Rockford Illinois angler Tom Healy was fishing with guide Tim Roller and hooked and landed a 41 pound 7 ounce monster while casting Michigan’s Manistee River. The fish hit a #8 Rapala Shad Rap.

In an era where we are seeing salmon sizes shrink and diminishing baitfish populations, the Browns keep getting bigger. I noticed this trend more than five years ago and started to theorize the causes. I did an article for The In-Fisherman that could explain some of it. Simply, the Salmon are geared to feed on alewives (dwindling population) and other pelagic baitfish populations. The Browns will diversify to other food sources as needed. Right now, Gobies!!! And lordy-mama, there is no shortage of gobies. I saw Browns gorged with gobies. I saw Browns hanging around the harbors (where the gobies are) all year long. And, I experienced Browns feeding on the bottom (where the gobies are) like Walleyes. Are the Browns in Lake Michigan getting to these enormous sizes due to the Gobies? I believe that is half of the answer. The other is the introduction of the Seeforellen Strain, a fast growing, late spawning strain that is accounting for most of the real giants being caught. Put the two factors together and you get a great shot at 25, 30 and now 40 pound Brown Trout. Tired of hearing about the “good old days in fishing”, there ARE the good old days for Great Lakes Brown Trout. Right now Lake Michigan is probably the best spot in the WORLD for a trophy Brown.

OK, let’s jump to Saskatchewan’s 106,000 acre Lake Diefenbaker. The self proclaimed “Fishing Geeks”, the Konrad brothers have done it again. These two young men, Adam and Sean (twins), are quickly putting their name above the legendary Trout greats like Ray Johnson (The Hermit of Flaming Gorge) and Del Canty.

On the evening of September 5th they trolled up a 48 pound Rainbow on a Rapala (Jeeze, it was a good week for Rapala!!!) breaking their own record of two years ago. The enormous sizes of trout on Diefenbaker are probably due to a stocking or accidental stocking of sterile (triploid) fish. These fish do not spawn and can concentrate all their effort to EATING!!! It shows, hey!
(Photo courtesy of The Fishing Geeks (http://www.fishinggeeks.net/))

What an incredible week in trout fishing history and two legendary fish. If that doesn’t get you out fishing this weekend you may as well put your tackle up on Craigs List!

The Report:
I think we received enough rain to get some fish moving this weekend. It will pull some Kings in from their staging positions and it will also draw some up the tribs. The water is still warm near shore so things aren’t perfect, but we are now at the point that they are coming in no matter what. Big spoons, crankbaits, and minnow baits tossed around the harbors are a good choice right now. A chunk of spawn under a slip bobber is also a good option right now and throughout the rest of the fall.

Next:
Speaking of spawn, I’ll give you a simple recipe to cure your spawn in my next visit.

Till then, tight lines and smooth drags.

Why Shore Fishing?

The Report:

The Lake Michigan fishing was slow last weekend. There are a few migrating 4 year-old salmon around but they aren’t happy. The east winds have piled up a lot of warm water near shore and they are forced to enter water out of their preferred temperature range. The streams are low too.

I did manage to land a mature female fully loaded with spawn that weighed only 13.25 pounds. This follows my hunches that the returning Kings are going to run small again this year. They are solid healthy fish but don’t have the bulk that they have had in the past. I’ll wait to see the DNR results from the weirs this year, but I could expect these fish to average 3-5 pounds less than what we have grown accustomed to. The DNR is hoping to see weights up due to a reduced stocking. We will see.

For those of you heading out anywhere on a Wisconsin pier this weekend, get out early with some glow spoons and then work the deep areas after that. The warm water will have them in a funky mood.

The Lure of Shore Fishing Lake Michigan:

I mentioned in my last post that I’d talk a little about shore fishing Lake Michigan, or any of the Great Lakes.

Most people assume that we shore anglers fish in this manner because we don’t have a boat. In some cases that is true. For the rest of us pier rats it is because we love it. It’s a 12 month a year drug that gets in your blood.

I have done some trolling in my life and it just never tripped my trigger. I am not going to try to turn a troller into a shore fisherman here. There are thousands of boats trolling our lake every day and some love it. It’s very effective and there are some very good charter captains on the Great Lakes today.

But for me, dragging lures around behind a moving boat with heavy tackle just isn’t fishing. While trolling will catch more fish in the long run, I’ll take one salmon or trout casting over ten trolling any day.

Shore fishing gives you the opportunity to present the lure to the fish with a variety of creativity. They may want a spoon reeled quickly near the surface when they are chasing schools of bait. They may react to a crankbait worked erratically at mid depths to imitate an injured alewife. They may be hugging the depths and want a jig or jigging spoon presented along the bottom. They could be herding baitfish up against a harbor seawall and looking for a lure cast parallel and retrieved inches from that wall. They may be feeding on gobies hopping along the bottom and only bite something that mimics them perfectly. The scenarios are endless. As a caster, you have the ability to make all this happen. You are the puppeteer and the lure is your puppet.

The tackle is another huge difference. As a troller your gear needs to be heavy. Your lines are being clipped to downriggers, attached to divers or side planers, or pulling big license plate sized dodgers. It’s all part of trolling. Few trollers stop the boat (it tangles too many lines) when a fish is hooked and heavy tackle is also needed to land fish behind a moving boat. For shore anglers, this isn’t a problem. Light lines and rods can be used to enjoy the the battle. For most of the season I use 8 pound test. I have landed hundreds of fish in the twenty and even thirty pound range on 8 pound line. Tackle suited for Bass or Walleye can be used to catch these fish.

The biggest attraction is feeling the strike. When trolling, the rod is in a rod holder when the strike occurs. The first mate will remove the rod from the holder, set the hook, and hand it to someone to reel in. When shore casting, you feel the strike, you set the hook. It may be a slight tap. It may be the feeling that the lure is getting heavier and heavier. Or it may be a salmon crushing the lure going the other direction at 30 miles per hour nearly ripping the rod out of your hand. Once you experience this feel of the strike, you will never go back. Watching the line melt from your reel hoping that you have enough. Seeing a Steelhead vault from the water and fly four feet in the air right in front of you. Watching a 20 pound Brown follow a lure to the wall and eat it right before your eyes. Watching the line on a live bait rig start jumping as the alewife gets nervous because a big fish is stalking it. These are things that you can’t experience while trolling. These are the things that make shore fishing like a drug. Its’ one-on-one, you and the fish.

Next:
It’s like the 2000 pound elephant in the room. Actually, a 41 pound 7 ounce elephant in the room. How can I not comment on the new Michigan State record and pending WORLD record Brown Trout that was caught last week in Michigan’s Manistee River. What an awesome fish and great title for the Great Lakes region.

Till then, tight lines and smooth drags.

9-09-09 The Rest of the Story

And now, the rest of the story...

There were probably three passes of line left on the reel so I had to do something. I reeled down and really started leaning on the fish with all the rod and line could take. I gained about three feet. I did it again, gained three more feet. The fish rose and surfaced. It was nearly at the rubble break wall that harbored the south end of Milwaukee. I yelled to Alex and pointed to the swirl, almost too far to see at this point. He thought it was funny and made some type of comment about who hooked who here.

It wallowed on the surface out there, probably ready to be netted but now it was 200+ yards off shore. I tried to gain line but the fish just seemed to plane to the north as I pulled. It wasn’t really fighting anymore, just using it weight to resist. The more I pulled the farther north it went. After five or so minutes of this it started to run again. I think she had been resting and was getting a second wind now.

I hadn’t really gained much line and was still was dangerously close to being spooled. If she was going to head north I had a chance to follow her. I called to Alex that I was going to chase her. He waved and said to take the net, but I grabbed a gaff that I had in the back pack instead. I knew I had to travel about 100 yards of rock and rubble till I could get to the beach and carrying a big net was out of the question. I asked Alex to watch my gear and bike. He waved and kept casting.

Like a mountain goat I hopped from rock to rock moving north with the fish. I had to keep up a steady pace since I had no line to give. Luckily I knew this hundred yard random pile of rubble as well as the sidewalk in my back yard.

I made it to the beach under the bluff and now I could travel along the water’s edge. For those of you that know this area, I was now about 100 yards north of where I hooked the fish and due east of the Cousins Center. It was a relief to move along the beach. In fact I was able to jog north and gain quite a bit of line. I was feeling pretty good at this point.

I had ridden the bike path above the bluff in this area a million times, never really going to the edge and looking down. My travel was interrupted by some type of storm water out-flow structure that I had never noticed before. Now what, I thought to myself. It was a huge pipe shrouded in more rubble. There was little flow coming out of it, but going through the water wasn’t an option. Previous flows had cut a deep trench in the beach that was too wide to hop over and too deep to walk through. While I surveyed the situation, the fish continued to take line. Slow and steady, but it wasn’t stopping.

I had no choice but to climb this thing too. There were more rocks and rubble and a bunch of thick soupy mud on top. Even from the top of the pipe I couldn’t see the fish. It was still too far off shore. I glanced at my watch. I didn’t know exactly what time I hooked the fish, but knowing when I left the house and how long it took me to get there I knew I had been hooked up for about 40 minutes at this point.

I continued to follow the fish north. No obstructions now. I looked up on the bluff and I knew I was east of St. Mary’s High School. I could see the Texas Ave pumping station. The boats moored to the north of the pumping station were all out by this time of the year, but now I started to worry about all the mooring rigging that was left in the water all winter.

Still moving north I was now at the far north end of the pumping station apron. I was almost an hour and easily a mile from where I started. I kept following the bike path north but now I was beginning to think that this was crazy. I also started to wonder if Alex was staying with my gear and how I was going to carry this fish back a mile if I did land it. Alex was always kind of a “fish for an hour” guy and I was figuring he probably wanted to leave by now. I’m sure he never guessed I’d be gone this long.

By now I am about two blocks north of Texas Ave. and no closer to landing this fish than I was an hour ago. The fish starts running east again and I swear it senses the gap in the break wall right there because it is running straight towards it. Enough is enough. Someone is going to win right now.

I tighten up the drag and grab the rod between the handle and first guide to get more leverage. I pull and the fish never budges. The drag loads up and then lets out a scream. I tighten it a couple more clicks and pull again. I felt a few head shakes and then nothing. She had won. I was soaked with sweat under my winter coat, tired and disgusted. I figured the line had broken but as I reeled in the 200 yards of line I had out I felt something on the end of it. As it approached, I could see my Tadpolly. I reeled it up and took a look at it. It was fairly new at the start and now it looked like you gave it to a dog to chew on. It had scratches and tooth gouges everywhere. The front hook was smashed flat. The rear hook was gone. All that was left was a mangled twisted split ring that held the rear hook. That’s what finally failed.

I was a long walk back to the power plant and Alex was still there casting his Krocodile spoon. He raised his hands out gesturing, where’s the fish. I didn’t even know where to start the story so I just showed him the lure. I gathered up my stuff and headed home.

The "big one" eluded me the rest of that year but it made me want it even more next year. I spent the winter feeling jinxed and rehashing the battle in my mind over and over. Could I have done something different? Heavier tackle? A bigger reel? A more powerful rod? No, probably not. This was just one of those supertankers that wasn’t going to be landed by some kid standing on shore.

I really loved Lake Michigan shore fishing up till that point. After that it became an obsession. Thirty five years later I still can’t get enough.

“Why shore fishing” is a topic that I’d like to get into next. It has nothing to do with boats, I have two of them. It’s about one-on-one and the challenge that I have recounted in this story.
I don’t know how big that fish was. I trust Alex’s guess at 30 pounds or more was pretty close. Fortunately, I did have the opportunity to land three or four legitimate 30’s since then so that day in November 1976 didn’t haunt me forever. It made me want it more. Thinking back, maybe I’m glad I didn’t land that fish that day.

For now, tight lines and smooth drags...

Marc

September 8, 2009

Well, I was wrong. We had some beautiful stable weather last week but unfortunately it came along with some on-shore winds. It drove up the water temperature near shore about 12 degrees and shut us down temporarily. A few three year old Kings fell to the night-owls off McKinley, but other than that there wasn’t much salmon action going on.

But they will be in soon, whether the water temps are right or not. They are driven by the urge to spawn. Photo-period, the amount of daylight per day, is their calendar. Their bodies are changing. Many of them have stopped feeding. The area where they were planted four years ago is imprinted into their brains and the drive to return is all they can focus on.

It will be interesting to see what returns this season. The years of thirty pound fish may be gone for now. Although my unscientific observations sure don’t show a loss in baitfish populations, the Salmon are a tell-tale sign. Although healthy, they don’t have the bulk they did a decade ago. Watching Salmon derby results also shows very few over 25 pounds this year. So we may have to be happy with a lot of 12-18 pounders like last year. Still nothing wrong with that.

Back in the 1970’s when the Alewife populations were high and the stocking balance was a little lopsided with Kings, big salmon were fairly common. Twenty pounders were pretty normal. Twenty-fives raised an eyebrow. Everyone was after a thirty!

It was early November of 1976. I was 14 years old and finishing up my second season on the big-lake. The Lakeside Power plant in St. Francis was my home away from home. I felt like I was starting to figure it out, catching my share of fish, and learning the science of the ever-changing lake. Yet, the big one had still eluded me. The big run of Salmon had nearly ended and my goal of a 20 pounder had not been met. It frustrated me to no end.

It was a Sunday. A cold bike ride to the lake left me with a frozen forehead that felt like an ice cream headache. It was probably in the low 30’s but the Packers were on the radio and there were still a few salmon around, so life was good.

It was just me and one other older fellow that I had gotten to know from seeing him down there nearly every day. His name was Alex and he stopped each morning and casted for an hour before work. He had a heavy German accent and cracked me up with his pronunciation of Krocodile (a popular lure) and Brown trout, rolling the “R’s” with a heavy “L” sound. Alex was a great guy and one of the “Alumni” as I called them. The daily regulars, whom I think enjoyed heckling each other in a good humor fashion more than actually fishing.

The discharge at the plant was low that day so I set up close to the chute. A few dark nasty Salmon were milling around the rocks, ready to finish their life cycle. My first lure was a glow and green Tiny Tadpolly, an odd shaped plug that had some attraction to spawning fish. It only took a couple casts and I hooked up. It felt like a good fish, but I couldn’t really see it in the roiled discharge waters. Alex made his way down the obstacle course of rocks, broken concrete and rusted rebar that lined the shore at the power plant. I was about 6 feet above him on a different rock and Alex had now made it to the water’s edge with his net. It was a good fight, but within a couple minutes the fish was near shore and looked like it was giving up and coming to the net. It rolled up by the rocks and we both got a good look at it. Alex blurted out, “Oh my god, that’s a thirty pounder”. I saw it too and had never seen a salmon with a head that big in my life. The Tadpolly was firmly planted in crook of her jaw. Before he could net it, I think she finally realized that she was hooked. She exploded the water with her huge tail and headed east like someone had stuck her in the butt with a cattle prod.

Line melted from my reel and I remember the spool spinning so fast that a rooster tail of water sprayed off misting my glasses. I couldn’t stop the fish. I had about 225 yards of eight pound test on the reel and now praying that it was enough.

I had been spooling the reel first with some heavier blue Stren line (backing). This took up some space on the base of the spool so I didn’t need to replace as much line every time I changed. It also served as a warning that I was about 50 yards from being out of line, or “spooled” as we call it. Particularly in the summer when they have all their strength, these Kings could “spool” you and empty your reel without stopping. I had seen it happen but never had it happen to me. But, now it was starting to worry me. The double uni-knot joining the backing to the main line had just passed through the guides. Fifty yards left.

I started to tighten the drag a little. The fish slowed, but was still taking line in shorter bursts. Every time I recovered six feet, she would take ten. Alex had returned to his casting spot by now knowing this was going to be a while. I was in trouble. By now most Salmon would have tired and attempted their next tactic, run straight back at you faster than you can possibly reel. It would often give them time and slack line to throw the lure. Hopefully it didn’t work, and would give you a chance to get most of your line back. Not this fish. It was sticking to plan A, spool him!

See you tomorrow for the rest of the story.

Who am I?

Greetings from the western shores of Lake Michigan.

My name is Marc Wisniewski and I hope to keep you posted on a variety of fishing related interests. They will vary from Lake Michigan fishing, Musky and Bass fishing, lure and rod making, new tackle, tactics and anything related to fishing.

I have been an obsessed fishing fanatic since I was about 12 years old when I discovered that I could ride my bike about three miles to the shore of Lake Michgan and catch some of the biggest trout and salmon in the world. After 35 years, I still love it.

I have done consulting work for tackle companies such as Mepps, Storm Lures, Suick and many of my developments are on the market today.

I am also a free lance outdoor writer and have published hundreds of articles over the past 23 years. I write the weekly (Thursdays, both print and on-line) fishing report for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. My other writing appears in magazines such as The In-Fisherman, Fishing Facts, Midwest Outdoors, Musky hunter, Wisconsin Outdoor News, and also on some websites.

I also love to make lures. Another obsession! One of the columns that I write in Midwest Outdoors is for Do-It Molds, a company that produces lead and tin molds to make your one lures and jigs. Hardly an evening goes by that I can't be found down in the "man-cave" whipping up a creation to catch something on my next outing. I also love to make wood lures and produce a Musky crankbait called the Party Crasher. I believe that this is my tenth year making that lure which has been sold not only here in Wisconsin, but across the country and even parts of Europe where they chase big Pike.

So there you have it in a nutshell for now. I make lures, build custom rods, write about fishing, and fish whenever I get a free moment.

Labor Day weekend looms on the horizon today and that has always been the unofficial start of the fall run of four year old Chinooks. We have been blessed with some cool water near shore this year so I am expecting a good September with a lot of big Kings hanging around the harbor, staging for their run up the rivers. In years when the water has been warm, they often wait as long as possible to come into the harbor and then just blast up the rivers on the first good rainfall. This year we should have very comfortable water for them near shore and a great opportunity to connect with one of these giants.

So, I will be out there this weekend and let you know whats happening. The talk of fall salmon reminded me of a great story from when I was young and just started chasing these fish. It's as close to a Hemingway Old Man and the Sea story that I have had and it took place when I was about 14. I'll share that with you in my next visit.

Tight lines and smooth drags!

Marc