LAKER LOVER

Tom Lowrey (Wisconsin) with his Uncle Bill from central Indiana held a family reunion and Laker-Fishing-Fest on the Brother Nature recently!

I’ll admit to being a lake trout lover. I agree, pound for pound they don’t fight like a king salmon. I agree, plate for plate they don’t taste as good as Great Lakes salmon in some recipes, either. But they are fun to catch and there are many recipes for lakers which will have you wanting seconds. So when the laker bite is on, I relish the opportunity to fish for and catch the fish which were once the top predator in the Great Lakes.

When I was a youngster I relished reading outdoor magazine accounts of jet-set anglers traveling to the ends of the Earth. These guys fished for huge fish in exotic locales, and those guys heading to the far north in search of sag-bellied lake trout were as much my hero as Justin Bieber is to today’s "citified" youths. I never knew lake trout were once endemic to Lake Michigan, a short drive from home. The commercial fishermen and lampreys had wiped them out.

Now they are back, they are big and when they are available, I love fishing for them. I’ve never come back to shore with a group of unhappy anglers who have had a been through a laker-smackdown.