Cooler By the Lake

     A bright smear of stars hung off of the coastline to the north as my friend Mark and I casted in the dark for fall-run Chinook salmon. We paused occasionally to retie knots or make sure key pieces of gear were readily accessible, but for the most part we just casted; each of us alone with his own thoughts. I was happy to listen to the slap of the swells against the concrete and the little night-time noises of the small town behind us, and to let myself become absorbed in the cast-reel, cast-reel reverie of pier fishing. It was nice, after a summer spent trying to finesse tiny spinners into little pockets in trout-stream logjams, to be able to rear back with the long rod and sling a three-quarters-ounce spoon without fear of any obstacle except perhaps a passing tug or the opposite breakwater.
     I had been casting for maybe an hour, stopping every half-dozen casts or so to recharge the glow-in-the-dark spoon with a flashlight, when the first strike of the night occurred. My body, starved for sleep after a long string of early wake-ups and busy work days, came instantly awake with a sudden surge of adrenaline. I set the hook, and felt the kind of power which immediately sets off excited alarms in the mind:  “Big fish! Big fish!” The salmon took line and then splashed heavily on the surface.
     “Got one, Kurt? Got one?” My friend Mark approached quickly in the dark; his voice hopeful.
     “Yep,” I said, and then the fish was gone as suddenly as it had become attached. I’m sure I cursed then, but I wasn’t too upset. We had all night and all of the next day to fish. I reeled in, watching the spoon’s phosphorescent trail appear from the depths next to the breakwater, checked my knot, and let fly again.
     Mark and I were fishing in Algoma, Wisconsin; a Lake Michigan port which bills itself as “The Trout and Salmon Capital of the World”—a claim which any number of towns from Oregon and Washington up through British Columbia to Alaska might contest. We aren’t overly susceptible to hype—we’ve been skunked often enough to know better—but it’s a better than even bet that we wouldn’t have been there at all had Algoma billed itself as, say, “The Kohlrabi Capital of the World.”
     By three o’clock in the morning we had two fish in the bag—both hen kings—which I had caught on a small glow-in-the-dark spoon. Mark hooked several fish, on marshmallows, of all things, but didn’t land any. I botched the net job on one, which he had skillfully hand-lined after it made short work of a cheap reel’s innards (I have discovered that king salmon will expose a weak link in tackle in an instant, so inferior gear is to be avoided as strenuously as a person who capitalizes the word “art” when it isn’t someone’s name or beginning a sentence.)
     By 4 a.m., we had decided to attempt to sleep. Mark—who is always prepared for any eventuality—had wisely brought a cot along. I, however, have always viewed the purchase of any gear not directly related to fishing as consumptiveness of the worst sort, so I paid for my principles by making my bed out of concrete of the and the jacket I was wearing. Not that I slept for more than a few minutes, anyway—the cold of predawn had arrived, and with it a whistling wind. I got up and began to cast again as the first figures of approaching fishermen appeared far off where the pier met sand.

Great Lakes Grandeur


     I love big water.
     I love the ocean, but since I live in the Midwest and not in Maine or the Carolinas or California, I make do with the inland seas found on my home state’s eastern and northern borders. And seas, to anyone who hasn’t seen them, is exactly what the Great Lakes are—as the monuments to perished souls in many harbor towns attest.
     What it is exactly about the Great Lakes which captivates me so much, I’m not sure, but it’s probably a combination of things. I like the sound of the wind singing through the downrigger wires. I like the heft of a box full of brightly-colored spoons. I like the hard slap of waves against a boat’s hull, the sound of gulls and foghorns, and the signs advertising smoked chubs and fresh whitefish as I near the lake. I like sipping coffee on a pierhead in half-dawn light, and I like watching a Deep Six or Dipsy Diver trailed by a whipping dodger going down, down, down until finally it disappears from sight.
     But I guess what I like most about fishing on big water is the oddly comforting feeling of insignificance which it gives me. “It’s a feeling you should be having all the time,” I can hear my wife say, but this feeling can best be found, I think, when facing scenes of incredible grandeur—and it helps if there’s a little hint of danger thrown in. Personally, I think many a swollen-headed celebrity might benefit from such adventure—by, say, trolling ten miles offshore, with only a ten-horse kicker for power, or by gunning for sea ducks from a pitching, frozen layout boat (especially the latter—I just had a mental image of Angelina Jolie in camouflage, and it’s a pretty good image. Just give me a moment. Okay, I’m back.)
     I was lucky enough to grow up just a few blocks from Wisconsin’s largest inland lake, and we spent an awful lot of time on it as a family, on the houseboat my dad built. Our other big-water trips when I was growing up were centered on the Door County portion of Green Bay, where we vacationed every summer, and Lake Michigan itself.
     We did a fair amount of salmon fishing from our boat, the “Sea Six,” on days when the weather allowed it, although what we did can probably only be termed “fishing” in the loosest sense of the word. We were in the very early learning stages when it came to trolling for salmon—what we knew was from what I had read or from tips my dad picked up from captain’s chatter on the marine radio, and we didn’t have an overabundance of gear. Occasionally—very occasionally—we would catch a fish, but mostly we’d stare at our few rods for hours on end, waiting for something—anything—to happen.
     I prayed a lot in those days.
     I didn’t pray for the state of my soul—already a foregone conclusion, I figured—but for the sudden snap of a rod to announce that a king had ambushed a J-Plug somewhere down in the depths. Or that someone would notice I was gone if I flung myself off of the boat at the beginning of one of our frequent, unplanned “Man Overboard” drills. These were always a tricky proposition. Generally, my older brother picked on my sister, my sister picked on me, and me and the dog picked on my younger brother. Alliances among siblings were always shifting, however, and before you pitched into the icy waters of Lake Michigan you had to be certain that any witnesses would, in fact, report the incident to Mom and Dad in a timely fashion, and not eight hours later when the boat was at anchor for the night.

Back to the Pier


     In the first few hours after dawn, I hooked four fish on a big, flashy silver spinner, which I figured would be more visible to salmon in the wind-stirred water. Points to me for using my head, but points subtracted for not landing any of the fish. As the morning wore on and the sun climbed higher in the sky, action tapered off to nothing, but Mark and I still kept at it, slinging spoons until our arms hurt. Mark—again, always prepared—cooked chili on a little propane burner, and we talked with the other fishermen on the breakwater. By now a little community had formed, and we shared coffee and lures, especially with our neighbor, a fellow from Minneapolis by way of Germany whom we dubbed “Minnesota Guy.” Minnesota Guy kept fishing, too, while I stole catnaps on the concrete of the pier. By evening, none of us had had a strike in six hours, and the wind had grown to gale strength while a black bank of clouds approached from the west.
     We called it quits.
     We shook hands with Minnesota Guy while he retrieved a steelhead from our cooler, and then got into my car for the drive home. We were exhausted after 21 straight hours of fishing, and we had a choice to make:  to take the shorter route, which would take us inland, or the longer route through the lakefront towns of Kewaunee and Two Rivers.
     We chose the longer route, so we could keep the big lake in sight for as long as possible.