GREAT FISHING, TWO WAYS

The weather forecast was for waves “about a foot” for last Friday and Saturday. On Lake Michigan that can have waves over 20 feet high during gales, “about a foot” is a great forecast.

Luckily, much of our early season fishing is nearshore where even if the evil winds are blowing, we can tuck in behind industrial breakwalls or stay nearshore where the seas will be kinder. But come summer, often it’s offshore 10 miles or more or nothing, so a calm mid-lake forecast is like a kiss from a pretty girl.

The forecast for Friday and Saturday was off by about 8 inches. The waves never got over four inches!  Back to back, flat calm conditions are exceedingly rare.

 The odd thing is how different the fishing was on those two days.

This is what the lake looked like as we were motoring to the fishing area on both Friday and Saturday mornings. You can see how majestically beautiful it was just after sunrise and it stayed that way all day, both days.

And on Friday, the fish loved it! The first fish bit while I was setting the third rod. A magnificent lake trout, Lake Michigan’s native apex predator came to the net. Then another and another and another and.... In short order, we had our laker limits and I pushed our trolling speed up, switched to lures more conducive to catching steelhead or salmon and the lakers continued to slurp up our baits. We did have one steelhead bite, but it threw the hook on it’s second aerial display.

I figured the next day was a slam dunk. No weather changes, I knew where the fish were, another great weather day. Ah, but the fish gods weren’t smiling!

This is my "should have been here yesterday crew" from Saturday. These guys are smiling because of the weather but what you see is the total catch. Three (nice) trout and one decent steelhead. We had a few other bites but a fish not caught is not counted for the most part.

As the sayings go, "that's why it's called fishing, not catching," or "the fishing was great, the catching was slow," or "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work."

So both days were successful, but in different ways. The saga of the Brother Nature continues.....

LUCKY SHOT

 I have lots of experience in taking fish photos. They are called “hero shots” where the lucky angler who has caught a photo-worthy fish stands, gripping and grinning, fish in hand and the photo is snapped.


   Most hero shots look, well they look contrived. Sure it’s a lasting tribute to both fish and angler of the size of the fish and the smiling face of the fisher-person. On the other hand, it’s a picture of a mope with a dead fish-or nearly dead.

   Professional photographers leave little to luck. They understand what’s going on. They prepare the scene, adjust the lighting and leave little to chance. Amateurs rely on luck.

    I’m somewhere in-between. I don’t rely on my photography skills to earn much money each year, but plenty of my photos end up in print. Sometimes a bit of luck helps out even us “semi-pros.”

   This was one of those times.

   Liz caught a nice lake trout on my boat and she handed her dad the camera to do the classic “grip and grin” photo. Since we were in the “photo” mood, I grabbed my own camera to take a happy-snappy of my own.

   The first time I pressed the button, the fish, still lively, waggled a wiggle. In the tiny view screen on the digital, I could see the fish wasn’t properly displayed. So I told Liz to hold it up once more for another shot. She complied.
  
Back at home, downloading the photos from the camera to the computer and able to see the photos in large size instead of a tiny LCR on the back of the camera, I realized Lady Luck had given me a blessing.

   The second photo showed a bored young lady with an apparently dead fish and an apparently fake smile staring at the lens.  The first photo, however, showed a beautiful young lady with a real smile coping with a lively fish.  A million times better in my book! Don’t you think so, as well?

PLANK IT!

Trim up the filets

Plank and Grill

Customers often ask me the best way to cook the salmon they are catching. I tell them,  “Remember in the movie, Forest Gump, when Bubba and Gump were scrubbing the floor with toothbrushes and Bubba started listing all the ways to cook shrimp? It’s like that with salmon. You can fry it, bake it, broil it....”
 
Another way is to “plank” it. The result is a marriage of smoked salmon (delicious) and grilled salmon, equally delicious.
 
Grilling planks are available in many places. Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s have them, or get them on-line from Amazon.com.

The idea is simple. Lay the fish on the plank instead of just on the grill rack. Then lay the plank on the grill rack, shut the lid on the grill and let it cook.

There are some preparatory chores before the final cooking. First, soak the plank in water. Cedar (the most popular plank) is a soft wood and will ignite easily. You do want the plank to burn eventually, but not instantly. Submerge the plank in a shallow pan of water for several hours.

I like to keep my grilled salmon simple so all I use is a bit of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt as a rub. If you have a favorite such as lemon pepper or other seasoning, have at it.  Once I have the filets trimmed, skinned and all the pin bones removed, I give it a light dusting of Lawry’s, top and bottom, pat the salt onto the meat and put in the refrigerator for an hour.

Don't expect leftovers!

Take the soaked plank from the water, rub a bit of cooking oil on one side then arrange the fish on the plank. I add a bit of fresh or dried dill to pep it up a bit. Then put the plank over the hottest part of the grill.

The plank will deflect most of the heat, preventing the fish from cooking too quickly. The wet wood resists burning because it’s wet. In essence, this initial cooking phase steams the fish.

Ideally, about halfway through the cooking process, the plank will dry to the point it starts to smolder and produce smoke. This is the smoke flavoring part of the cooking process.

Once the plank starts to smolder, turn down the heat and let the fish finish cooking slowly. Total cooking time is roughly 15 minutes. Don’t overcook. Remove the fish to a serving platter, douse the plank to put it out and dinner is served.

GREAT LAKES ARE FROZEN

 As of mid-February, all five of the Great Lakes are “officially” frozen over.  In actuality, they were 90% ice covered, but when they hit that level, the people in charge of observing Great Lakes ice conditions proclaim them to be totally frozen. The last time the lakes were frozen completely was in 1994.

        Few lakes in the upper Midwest completely freeze in the winter. Springs, muskrats, wildfowl, stream inflows, pressure ridges and other factors often produce areas with thin ice or even open water.

          In the Great Lakes, unfrozen areas can be the result of currents as in the Straights of Mackinaw, St. Mary's River, Detroit River, Niagara River and a few others. Industries and lake shore power plants discharge heated water in other areas. There can be wind-driven openings in the ice similar to pressure ridges that occur on inland lakes.


      The U.S. Coast Guard operates a fleet of ice-breaker vessels on the Great Lakes. There's our tax dollars at work!  In some areas tug boats and other vessels do ice breaker duty to keep industrial harbors in action.

        There are two silver linings to the frozen Great Lakes. Winter evaporation from unfrozen surface water in mild winters is one factor creating what’s become chronic, even record low lake levels. Related to the evaporation from the unfrozen lakes is, once the lakes are frozen, the lake effect snow machine is shut down. The upper Midwest is getting enough snow to satisfy most people without the lake snow this winter.

       Will this have an affect on the fishing next season?  Maybe a late start to the action.... Maybe it will drive more fish down to MY end of the lake.... Hope so! There's only one way to find out. The fun way.  Let's go fishing !

GEAR GRABBER

I first saw the Gear Grabbar (no misspelling) at the inaugural Chicagoland Fishing, Travel and Outdoor Expo last winter.  “Just another lure organizing tool,” I thought to myself. When Jennifer Gesik, sales director, demonstrated the Gear Grabbar, I thought, “Wow, it may just be another gear organizing tool, but it’s a cool one.”

I’ve used similar things in the past. Some were chunks of foam fastened in a strategic location. Others were shallow trays to contain stray hooks and tackle or little ledges with holes to poke hooks to keep lures in check. It was just as easy to put a lure back in the tackle box as in the temporary hook-holder.

So what makes the Gear Grabbar different? Magnets! And more.

The more is the aluminum bodied Gear

Grabbar is configured similar to a piece of angle iron. Mount the GG so the back part of the angle is against the mounting surface, the other part of the angle is like a shelf with the imbedded magnets facing down. Mounting is simple with two-sided sticky-tape dots (included) or by fastening to the backing with stainless steel screws or bolts.

Jennifer Gesik, the GG-Girl

When you take out a lure, or take it off the line, it’s simple to just slap it up under the GG and it sticks. The magnets are so powerful, you can throw the lure at it and the hooks will stick. When they are stuck under the ledge, they are much less likely to catch on pants, shirts or worse, skin, if you accidently brush against the GG.

I ran into Jennifer again recently at an outdoor writer’s gathering. I verbally gave her a testimonial about how much I liked the Gear Grabbar on the boat and picked up couple more, as well. I will be putting them somewhere.  Available in black or white, look for them at Cabela’s, Bass Pro and other tackle shops or at www.magneticmarineproducts.com .
 

LOST AND FOUND

   Years ago a friend of mine showed up to fish wearing a pair of Oakley Sunglasses. He was proud of them and with a price on the far side of $100, he should have been.

Sunglasses are vital fishing tools, but they
don't have to be overly expensive.

   Now, don’t get me wrong! A good pair of sunglasses are important when fishing. They cut the glare, protect your eyes from UV radiation and function as safety glasses. But they don’t have to cost on the far side of a hundred bucks.
    The boat I owned at the time had fairly wide, carpeted gunwales. For some reason Larry took off his glasses, laid them on the gunwale close by his elbow and a fish bit.  It’s not a long story, but sad. “Fish on,” was called. Elbows flew. Oakley’s went into the lake and we could see the faint sparkle of the O even as the black frames faded away as the pricey spectacles sunk below the waves. .
    Larry was naturally upset and the loss sent him into an amazing display of stringing multiple curse words together into a sentence that made supercalifragilistic... seem as short as a personal pronoun. It was a truly awesome performance.
    Twenty minutes later I decided to change the lure on the back downrigger. When the downrigger weight came up out of the water, there were the Oakleys, the earpiece folded securely around the downrigger wire. Since I was between Larry and the prize he didn’t see them so I quickly grabbed them, folded them up, slid them into my breast pocket and closed the flap.
    Another 20 minutes went by and I mentioned the lost sunglasses once again and goaded Larry into another, almost as good as the first time, string of cursing as he bemoaned the lost glasses and lost money. So I told him that since he felt so bad, I’d let him have them back and pulled the lost and found pair of sunglasses from my pocket.
    It was grand. Had I pulled a rabbit from my pocket he couldn’t have been more incredulous!

FOTOTROPHY

       
One of the reasons I love fishing Lake Michigan is because of the chance to catch some of the largest fish available in fresh water. Many, many people have scored their biggest fish ever on the Brother Nature.  A few of them have taken their fish home whole, with plans to deliver it to a taxidermist to make a lasting trophy, a lasting memory of their catch. Most settle for a simple snapshot.
With today’s digital cameras and cell phones, a snapshot is an easy and almost free way to remember the catch.  But is it a real trophy?
Getting the fish mounted is quite expensive. Measure the fish’s length, put a tape around it’s belly and add the two together. A big salmon can be 3 feet long and have a 20 inch or larger waistline. Call it 56-inches, total. Now multiply that by $10 per inch and your trophy catch can cost you way on the far side of $500.
I was recently contacted by a person who offers another, way less costly option. It’s called Fototrophy.
Send them a good quality photo of you and your catch. They print out the photo, securely laminate it to a thick acrylic backing, then carefully cut out the outline of you and the fish (deer, turkey or whatever). The cut-out is secured to a base plate and the result is a realistic trophy that can be displayed on a mantle, desk, bookshelf or anywhere you choose. It looks almost 3-D.
The cost is reasonable. A 5-inch Fototrophy costs $40, an 8-inch is $60. Personally, the 8-incher is the way to go.  Much more impressive. The photo shown here is a Fototrophy of me and a young angler who caught a lake trout almost as big as he.  If you think it looks good, you should see it in person!