Superior Success, Kind Of

Salmonids

Close followers of my fishing adventures know that I personally have had very poor luck fishing Lake Superior, which is only a couple blocks from my home in Duluth.  Shorecasting, drifting flies and worms in tributaries, helping out on a buddy's charter boat, ice fishing, and spending a few hours on other friends' boats all had me netting plenty of fish for others, but never connecting on any fish myself.  Finally this spring I caught my first Lake Superior fish, a nice walleye, but those are considered a lowly bottom feeder by this trout snob.  No, I only count salmonids on my tally sheet.  Finally, I caught one small coho salmon on The Colonel's boat in August...a salmonid, but I barely even felt it wiggle bringing it in.  

Still, in mid-September I was excited to give it a try on a new buddy's boat. The Brewer hadn't had the boat, a small, but worthy craft, on the big lake yet and he was pretty excited to try it as well.  We arrived at the nearest public access just before sunrise, the first craft to be launched that day.  The boat went into the water, the truck went back up to be parked in the lot, and we stepped in to take off.  No go.  Dead battery.  The navigation light switched had been bumped on and the battery was drained.  Hmmm.  Tried to use a jumper from the truck.  No go.  Finally tried the emergency pull starter.  No go at first, but a re-rigging of it brought the 40 horse to life.  We headed out onto a dead calm Lake Superior.  I dropped down a dipsy-diver (we didn't have any downriggers) with a favorite orange spoon and had a strike before we even had the other lines in the water.  I reeled in a very nice coho salmon and The Brewer netted it perfectly.  Success!  Maybe today was finally my day.

We didn't have any more action in that area, so after a bit we headed out to deeper water.  The Brewer had a strike on his dipsy and stick bait, so we turned around slowly and headed back through that spot.  I saw my dipsy line tug and soon I had a nice lake trout to the boat.  The Brewer went for it with the net and somehow the fish went right through it!  The net had come apart and needed to be repaired.  We wrestled the trout on board by hand.  It wasn't huge, but The Brewer was going to feed his family well that night.  

We felt we had pinpointed a good spot, so we went to turn and troll through it again.  Suddenly an absolutely piercing noise came from his boat console.  I mean hurt your ears screaming.  It was some type of alarm.  We didn't dare shut the motor off for fear of not getting it started again (remember the dead battery) and after poking around a bit, we just boated back to the landing and gave up.  We didn't want to risk any major damage to the motor.  We think maybe the dead battery made the alarm system funky.  Either way, our day was done.  Just when I had finally found some Superior fish!  Foiled again.  

It was still a good trip for me with the two fish and I had a nice time chatting with the The Brewer on a beautiful Lake Superior morning.  Still living the good life in a cool city on a great lake.