Joan with Coho Salmon
“What’s the weather going to be like next Thursday?” Food Photographer Andy asked me as he called to check on his Lake Superior fishing charter which was 5 days away. In my effort not to be rude or a smart-Alec about it, I used a thoughtful tone of voice and said “Well, It’s hard to say for sure when its so many days away. I don’t even pay attention to the long-range forecast, because even the short-term ones are often wrong.” That was last week, and this was his day, and only day available for fishing, after traveling all the way from Des Moines, Iowa.
As of yesterday, the weather forecast for today was not very good, in fact it was looking like we wouldn’t be able to fish at all. As it turned out, Andy and his wife, retired school counselor Joan, showed up at 7 am in their little convertible Mazda Miata. The car was so small that they didn’t have room for a cooler for fish. When asked if they wanted to bring fish home, they said no, they were just fishing for fun.
The sun was coming up over the horizon as we crawled through the channel, with no sign of bad weather, but I knew it was coming later that afternoon since I had checked the Internet radar.
Less than an hour later, we were landing our first Coho Salmon and soon had a lake trout and another salmon. We boated 5 fish before the thunderstorms seemed to be threatening, and we headed in. My deckhand, Jim, and I were glad to take some fish home with us… it’s not very often my clients just fish for pleasure.
Just as we crossed Lac La Belle, it started to rain and we could see and hear thunderstorms approaching.
“Your timing was impeccable for getting us in before the bad weather set in,” Andy said as we pulled into the dock.
“Sometimes I just get lucky,” I said. I’m just a lucky kind of guy, I thought, in more ways than one.
Joan with Lake Trout
Andy’s Lake Trout
Happy Andy with Coho Salmon
Brian Helminen
