Wednesday was a late start, as a family of 6 drove all the way from L’Anse where they were renting a cabin for the week. Eight year marine, Brian and his wife, mother-in-law and 3 kids enjoyed a day of trolling for Lake Trout in the Keweenaw. Afterwords, they brought their catch to the Harbor Haus to have it cooked for them. They generously left us with a few fillets for our own tasty meals.
Thursday was another windy day of wishing we could get out for more fishing, perhaps for coho salmon, that we have seen a few of lately. Friday a group of young men came from various places around the country to see the wedding of their friend Matt,who is a computer specialist living in the Chicago area. Dane, the one who found Sand Point Charters in the Internet, came all the way from Texas for the wedding and fishing for salmon and lake trout. We started off near Bear Bluff, with surface lines and dipsy divers and landed a king salmon (Chinook) and a coho. Bicycle tour guide Doug landed the coho and groom Matt, caught the king salmon. After the sun was high in the sky, we went deep for lakers, all the way out to one of my “spots.” The number of tangled messes, false releases and missed fish were a little “out of line,” but in spite of them, everyone had a good time. What a great group of guys. In the end, after a nice calm morning on the water, we came in with 1 king salmon, 1 coho and 5 lake trout. The “big one” got away from Doug as he got it up to the surface near the boat before it let loose and swam back down to cold waters. At least we didn’t hear too many colorful words of exclamation.
Late Friday evening, I trolled for coho for an hour before dark, and into the dark with glow spoons, to no avail. In the morning, local carpenter Dan and I trolled for salmon, then jigged for lakers before coming in with nothing to show. Dan missed 2 hits on the jigging line, but I couldn’t seem to get a bite. The afternoon was spent with farmer Reid from Iowa and son-in-law, GM Parts man, Tom and one 7 year old, Nathan from the Houghton area. We made up for the recent in-action, by taking home about 38 lbs of lake trout in 10 fish. The largest was 6 lbs taken by the littlest guy, Nate.
Finally got some pleasure fishing in with John today. Landed 12 fish, including a couple double headers and one Triple! the triple came in the end, after we had 9 fish in the box and we trolled for an hour without trying for the 10th to limit out, then when we decided to pull the lines, we got the triple.We released 2 and came in with 10 nice lakers.
Brian Helminen
