A Fine Feast

People often ask me what’s the best way to prepare the salmon they catch on the Brother Nature. I always ask them if they remember the scene in Forest Gump when Bubba starts listing the ways to cook shrimp. It’s like that with salmon. You can broil it, grill it, bake, fry, poach, smoke, pickle and don’t forget salmon loaf, salmon cheese balls, salmon..... There’s no bad way. I also tell them to first cook it the way they prepare the walleye, bass, bluegills, catfish or other kinds of fish they catch. My theory is they know how that tastes, cooking their salmon the same way gives them a basis for comparison.

All that being said, the Wadas family (mentioned in my previous blog) didn’t follow that advice when preparing the cohos they caught for the main course for their Easter meal. Here’s a photo of the main course, just out of the oven.

Looks good to me!

FISHING FOR DINNER

I hate beating up customers so I elected to stick close to shore yesterday instead of heading out to laker-land 7 or 8 miles offshore and risk the prediction for stiff winds a'comin'. Storms and strong winds had muddied the nearshore areas and put the shallow-water fish on hold the last several days.
Pressure was on since the family told me they were planning salmon for their Easter menu. Three hours into the trip, it was looking like perhaps a trip to the supermarket for some farm-raised stuff would be needed. An Storm Rattlin' ThinFin saved the day down by the 3rd light out of the East Chicago Marina. Then another coho hit a dodger/fly on the way back to the second light, followed by a 3rd, between there and the first light. "Good," I told them, "We've gone from a 'couple' in the box to a 'few' in the box. One more fish and we can say we did okay and 'caught some'."
I'm happy to report, we caught some and some more and the Wadas family ended up with enough for Easter and another meal in the future.

Pictured here is Michael Wadas and friend, Ally Ylo with her first fish ever!


I don't know if the sunny skies helped, the fish just turned on (a little) or it was the fish-god smiling.
I have a group from Iowa for the next couple days. They always bring foul (fowl?) weather so we will be answering the radio as the "Gore-Tex" team.
Wish us luck. Only 2 inches of rain predicted......

BEATING THE STORM

I should have known the "Perfect Storm" would be a-brewin’ this weekend. Doug Wheelock and he Iowegian Team of fishermen were scheduled to make the drive from Sioux City, Iowa for 3 days of Lake Michigan fishing. Not that we have never had nice weather when the Iowa-guys have come for the last couple of decades. We’ve experienced the rare day of calm seas and warm sun. Usually, however, they bring wind. Often lots of wind and then think back to the rainy days, the snowy days, the hail storms and other weather anomalies. So it’s no wonder I’m writing this instead of just leaving the harbor for another day of adventure on the Brother Nature.

The wind is howling at 30-knots–due east. When we quit, yesterday it was 21knots northeast and we climbed over a few 8 foot waves heading back to Hammond Marina.

Calumet Harbor, built prior to WWII, offers several miles of protected breakwall for a northeast wind. So that’s where we went on day one of the Iowegian visit. It took about 15 minutes to bounce the two miles from Hammond to the detached breakwall and about 5 minutes to hook up with the first coho.

I’d like to report the action stayed that fast but it didn’t. It never died completely and actually, as the day progressed the bite got better. Perhaps as the waves outside the breakwall intensified, it pushed more fish to the inside. Our last 5 fish came in about 15 minutes.

When Wheelock and I fished in Ludington last summer, our best lure was a "Wonder Bread" J-Plug and so with rumors of kings being caught, recently, we put one of them out, mid-morning. Lucky for Roger Gruber, Wheelock was playing a coho when the downrigged J got bit. Doug knew it was the "big-fish" rod and has been known to jump the rotation at the sound of a reel’s drag being tested.

Gruber wrested the rod free and ended up with a trophy brown trout to score top honors for the day. Of course, with 19 cohos to go with it, no one went home with empty hearts.

So we are sidelined today and with the winds predicted to veer to southerly quadrants tomorrow, dawn will find us, slickered against the rain, ready to do battle.

TWO VIEWS OF TEXAS

I don’t deny being a fisherman. I don’t deny choosing travel destinations on the quality and quantity of fish which swim in nearby waters. But don’t think I can’t participate in other adventures (in addition to catching some fish) when I’m away from home.

I just got back from several days at Canyon of the Eagles Resort on Lake Buchanan west of Austin, Texas. Sure, I caught some fish. Nice ones! Purebred stripers, white bass and man-made hybrids of these species. But let me show you a couple of the other "views" of Texas I was able to see on the trip.

Paddle Sports are all the rage, these days. Canoeing, kayaking and paddle boarding is booming. I’ve canoed plenty of times, so when the opportunity to jump into–or is it onto–a kayak, I jumped. Fun stuff and an interesting view of Texas and Lake Buchanan--over my toes and the pointed bow of the kayak.

The next afternoon, I met William. I called him Willy and he was the horse I was assigned at the Post Oak Farm a short distance away from the Canyon of the Eagles. On Willy’s back, I got a more traditional view of Texas as we meandered through the scenic pastures and woodlands, not much changed from the days of the cowboys.

My thoughts? I may buy a kayak–I can see the fishing potential. Willy will remain a resident of Texas.

Canyon of the Eagles: www. canyonoftheeagles.com

Post Oak Farm: www. postoakfarm.com

LADIES DAYS (and others)!

It’s been an interesting 4 days. It’s not common in late March or early April to have the opportunity to fish 4 days in a row. I don’t usually get that many bookings and when I do, the weatherman doesn’t cooperate enough to allow it.

On Wednesday, I fished Abby Seitzinger (seven years old) who brought along her dad and uncle to do the driving. She was the fisher-person! We fished out of East Chicago, specifically at the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal. I don’t remember Abby losing any fish, but her "drivers" did. Still, the cohos were cooperative and she coached them on to their limits.

Thursday, I hosted a trio of Michiganders who headed "south" to get some fresh fish to eat. You can see from the photo, they got their wish, with several bags of coho filets to keep them in meat until "spring" moves north to their normal fishing lakes.

Friday was a group from Kansas who drove 500 miles to catch some fish. They were joined by one Indiana friend. We had a great time. The fish mysteriously vacated the ship canal, but we located them offshore of the U.S. Steel Gary Works a few miles away and ended up with 15 beauties in the cooler before the rains showed up.

Finally, on Saturday, a long awaited "family reunion" sort of trip. A couple of years ago my brother and his wife set up a "gift certificate" to their son and his new wife of a Lake Michigan Fishing Trip on the Brother Nature. By spring, Carrie was with child and in no morning mood to fish. By the following spring they were well into child care activities to plan a trip so this year, Grandma babysat while Grampa, Justin and Carrie came to fish. We found the fish right outside the marina and slowly picked away to a catch which included the first steelhead of the year, as well as limits of cohos. Carrie caught the first, last, biggest and several fish in the middle.

THE FINAL 15TH

Boat maintenance done. Some of my family duties (daughter moving) finished. Weatherman finally pre-cognized a great day, I rounded up a couple of friends and we hit Lake Michigan aboard the Brother Nature for the shake-down cruise. Though I’ve done it a couple times, I don’t like heading to the lake with "paying" customers for the first trip of the year. Ya just never know for sure.

But the Brother Nature fired right up with some fresh $3.60 gasoline. It didn’t seem to leak, the boat went backwards with the gear lever in reverse and forward once we were away from the dock at the East Chicago Marina.

Reports had cohos right outside the marina so why leave fish to go find other fish? Side planers were deployed, lures deployed and with only 4 or 5 rods set in our 9-rod array, the first salmon of the year struck, was skillfully played and soon entombed in the fish well. Then another and another and it seemed as though we were in for a quick limit.

So Greg decided to shake one of the smaller cohos hoping to replace it later with one a few inches larger. Then Tom misjudged his fish tossing skills and banked a coho he’d caught off the live well lid and back to the lake. No matter we thought, only to realize we’d abused our standing with the fish god (or lady luck) after a 2 hour dry spell.

The skies brightened and put the fish back in the mood and soon we were at or close to our 15 fish limit. Greg performed the count, by pulling each fish from the well tallying 15. But as he was stowing the load, the last fish caught, only a minute or two from the lake gave a tricky flip and it too suddenly found itself back home in the lake. We were back to needing one more fish.

Tom with our final 15th coho.

I started the fish cleaning and had all 14 fillets cut and bagged. Tom handled the clean up chores, washing down the deck of the coho blood and the final fish hit a Red Arty.

It’s game on! And I’m looking forward to a great season.....

ALMOST READY

My butt is as flat as a road-killed possum. The sport show season is over for me after attending the Cabela’s Captains Weekend at their Hammond, Indiana show. That’s a lot of sitting on a relatively uncomfortable stool for hours on end!

Actually, I enjoy the shows. They are not my most productive way of selling fishing trips on the Brother Nature, but there’s a steady parade of old friends and fellow fishermen stopping by my station–all with cabin fever as bad as I have. It’s good to see them and talk fishing. I didn’t keep a strict tally, but I’d estimate over the weekend the discussions at my table involved the harvest of several thousand salmon, a few mahi-mahi and amberjack, more than a few walleyes and a good number of ducks, deer, geese and turkeys.

Between the early calls coming from past customers, people finding me in other ways and the phone ringing after the show weekends, I’ve got a healthy number of trips lined up right on through the spring. There are plenty of weekday openings left and some weekends (mostly Sundays.) Give me a call and we’ll get you set up!

In the past week the ice in the marinas has broken and melted so the lake is open and apparently the pack-ice on the main lake has disappeared, as well. A very few boats have squeezed in some early action and have had a bit of success on cohos and brown trout. The water is still very cold and the fish concentrated in the warm water discharge areas. It’s also quite dirty looking which is a good thing.

That dirty water is what the sun works on and heats more rapidly than clear, clean water. The salmon would rather be in the warm water than the clear, offshore cold water so they swarm to the shallows. Things will break loose in the next week or so and the spring fishing excitement will be going full force!