Lake Superior is a Fickle Biscuit

When our daughter Super-Kid was a toddler and developing her vocabulary, I found myself having to adjust my language during unfortunate events so she didn't pick up any poor habits. I often fell back to my Dad's non-cussing that he did around me when I was a kid. Thus, "Son of a Biscuit!" became standard fare in our household. Well, let me tell you, Lake Superior is a fickle biscuit. After I arrived home from the annual Shitstorm trip in mid-June, my neighbor the charter captain told me all about the crazy good fishing he was having on the big lake just outside our home City of Duluth. Piles of delicious Coho Salmon, coolers full of big, hard fighting lake trout, and a even a king salmon or two thrown in for good measure. After having slow fishing up north, I was ready to hit Superior. Luckily my good pal The Colonel had just acquired a Lake Superior worthy boat. It was an older model but was in very good shape, 18 feet long, a deep v, and well-powered. Also luckily, he stumbled into a cache of older, but still in great shape, deep water trolling gear at no cost. Electric downriggers, trolling rods and reels, spoons, plugs, dipy divers, flashers, flies, a long handled net, the whole bit. He made a few other investments and the boat and gear was ready in short order.

We didn't make it out before the canoe trip, but the week we got back, the big lake was like glass and fishable Monday through Thursday. Of course, we couldn't go those days, we had too much work stuff going on. So we went on that Friday with his three boys. It was too windy. We tried to make a go of it for about an hour but the waves grew. Right before we hid behind the pier, I did catch a fish. My first Lake Superior fish. A lake trout, my favorite fish? No. A tasty coho salmon? No. A hard charging king salmon? No. It was one of those darn bottom feeding walleyes, a 25 incher. Caught 3 feet below the surface in 50 feet of Lake Superior water. Oh well.

The next couple weeks was a series of disappointments. When my friends with boats could go, I couldn't. If I could, it was too windy. We even had a couple false starts when we thought we could fish, but turned around when the waves were determined to be too big. Finally on a sunny afternoon, the Colonel and I along with another friend made it out on the big lake. We got trolling, still learning the ins-and-outs of the boat and the gear. After a bit, we had a fish on and our friend, a skilled craftsman who had helped with some critical modifications on the boat, brought a nice 6lb or so lake trout on board. Joy! The Colonel later added a decent coho salmon to the box. Not too shabby, but my cold water species shutout on Lake Superior continued.

On July 4th, the wind finally laid down again and I had the rare treat of fishing Lake Superior in my canoe. It was dead calm at 5:30am when I started jigging off a rocky point up the shore from Duluth. I kept jigging deeper and deeper, and finally hooked a fish on the bottom in 130 feet of water. It felt like a very nice fish, but it spit the hook about 1/2 way up. Son of a Biscuit! It was my only bite of the morning, but I admit just being out aways on Lake Superior in a canoe is fun...if you look the right direction, all you can see in your view is the bow of your canoe and water all the way to the horizon. Looking the other way, it was so calm and clear I could make out Duluth's aerial lift bridge, but only the top half, over the horizon of blue. A great morning to be a Duluthian.

Made it out on the big lake again with the Colonel and his oldest boy on Saturday. The pizza and wings we brought on board were great and strangely, despite calm waters, we had the lake to ourselves. A little sprinkle kept the riff raff away I guess. Maybe they knew the fishing was bad...we never had a bite all afternoon. Nothing. Well, we did have equipment issues, tangled lines, missing lures, etc. So maybe that had something to do with it. Tried to go fishing on Sunday morning on another friend's boat, but the wind was stronger than forecast, so no go. Fishing can be a real biscuit sometimes.