Sixth grade school teacher Mary, and her hubby, limestone quarry foreman Larry, from Missouri, spent some time here in the Houghton and Chassell area for their 25th wedding anniversary. Yesterday, they drove almost an hour to get to Lac La Belle for some trolling on Bete Grise for lake trout. Larry does a lot of fishing near his hometown of Perryville, MS for big catfish, blue gills and some large mouth bass, but has never fished the Keweenaw waters of Lake Superior.
My original plan was to head out to my “hot spot”, but as we passed through an area where we caught lots of fish in the past, I decided to fish there for a while first. A while later, with only one fish in the box, I decided to pull the lines and go back to plan “A.” By the time we had all the lines in, there were 2 more fish to add to our catch, but nothing bigger than 4 lbs.
At this point, Larry was chumming the fish, throwing up over the side. Feeling compassion for him and not wanting to subject him to rougher water if he didn’t want to, I offered to go close to shore where we would be protected by land from the slight breeze. I said we could still fish and may catch something, but I could not guarantee anything, since the waters were getting pretty warm already. I added that I’m quite sure we can catch some at the “hot spot” but it WILL be a little more choppy there. He opted to “…go where the fish are.”
We reset our lines in 190 feet, heading for a hump which we dragged dodgers and spin-n-glows across several times, catching more lake trout in the 4 lb range. We had only about 1/2 hour to go with 8 fish on ice and we caught a few more fish. We took a few pictures, while we left the DR’s still fishing down deep. As I gutted the last fish, I saw the last down rigger was tripped and pulling. Foreman Larry grabbed it and fought a pretty good fight with a 10 1/2 lb lake trout as our bonus fish. It was a nice end to a pretty good day of fishing, especially for Larry, since he spent most of the time fighting seasickness. I’m sure he’d rather fight a big fish any day, rather than motion sickness. Now he’s on flat ground enjoying some very pink and orange, tasty lake trout… good choice, Larry! Let’s go where the fish are!
Brian Helminen
