There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a harbor before sunrise, and Belmont Harbor had it in full when I finally rolled up to the dock. The three of us, me and my buddies Jesse and Jake, were in Chicago for a conference, and I had booked a six hour trip with King Fisher Charters to squeeze in some fishing before the meetings took over our week. The plan was to be at the boat by a quarter to seven. Chicago traffic had other ideas, and we pulled in a few minutes late, coffee in hand, with the city still half asleep behind us. Captain Kevin was ready to go and did not miss a beat.
Jesse and Jake had heard me talk about Lake Michigan salmon and trout fishing long enough that they finally called my bluff, so a free morning before the conference kicked off was the perfect excuse to get them out on the water.
I have fished a lot of water over the years, small Pennsylvania trout streams, the flats down in the Bahamas, big rivers and little creeks. Lake Michigan is its own animal. It looks like an ocean, it fishes like an ocean, and on the right morning it gives you that same feeling of running out into open water with no idea what the day is going to hand you. This was one of those mornings.
Running Out
We pulled away from the dock right on time and Kevin pointed the bow east. The run out took about thirty minutes and put us somewhere between five and ten miles offshore. What surprised me, and I have seen a lot of water, was how good it looked out there. The wind had laid down overnight, so the lake was almost flat, maybe one foot of gentle roll. The water was clear and a deep blue green, the kind of color you do not expect from a Great Lake that sits next to a city of millions. And the city was still right there with us. Even five miles out, the Chicago skyline stood up clean on the horizon behind the boat. There is something a little surreal about watching downriggers go down while the Sears Tower watches over your shoulder.
Captain Kevin has been doing this a long time. He runs out of Belmont Harbor with the Chicago Charter Boat Company and has the tournament resume to back up the talk, including a major salmon win earlier in his career. You can tell pretty quickly when a captain knows his water, and Kevin knew exactly where he wanted to set up.
The Spread
If you have never seen a Great Lakes trolling spread go out, it is a sight. Kevin and the mate had something like twelve to fifteen rods working at once, and watching them set the whole thing without tangling a single line was a clinic in itself. The downriggers carried baits down deep to scrape near the bottom. Planer boards pulled lines out to the sides of the boat, away from the wash, so we could cover water well off the gunwales. In between, they had rods staggered to fish every level of the water column, top to bottom.
The business end was mostly flashers and spoons. If you have trolled for salmon and trout, you know the drill. The flasher spins and flashes to draw a fish in, and the spoon trailing behind it does the rest. Kevin set us up in 80 to 120 feet of water and we started marking fish on the sonar almost right away. There is no better feeling than seeing those arcs stack up on the screen and knowing it is only a matter of time before a rod folds over.
First Blood, and a Missed Shot
It did not take long. The first rod went off and Jesse, fresh off the dock and a little too eager, jumped on it and pulled the rod before the fish was buttoned up. Clean miss. To his credit it was an honest mistake, the kind every new salmon angler makes once. When a downrigger rod pops free of the release, your instinct is to set the hook hard, but on a trolling rig the boat has already done that work for you. You just need to get the rod out of the holder and start reeling. Jesse learned that lesson the expensive way, with three guys giving him a hard time about it for the next hour.
He got his redemption fast. The next fish that came up was his, a small spring coho, bright and chrome and full of fight for its size. First fish of the day went in the box and the skunk was off the boat. Spring coho run smaller but they are scrappy, and there is nothing wrong with one to start the morning.
Jake went next and stepped it up, putting a nice lake trout in the net. Lakers are the workhorses of this fishery, deep fighters that pull hard and feel twice their size when they are using the whole water column against you. Then a rigger rod off the bottom doubled over and it was my turn. I came tight to a good lake trout, the best fish of my day, and it gave me everything it had on the way up. There is a reason people fall in love with this fishery.
Taking Turns
From there it settled into a rhythm. A rod would fire, whoever was up would grab it, and the rest of us would clear lines or work the net. We took turns the rest of the trip and the action stayed steady. By the time Kevin turned us back toward the harbor, we had put eight fish in the box, four lake trout and four coho. A clean, even split, which almost never happens, and a solid day by any measure on this lake.
The Moment Nobody Will Let Jake Forget
Every trip has one moment that becomes the story you tell later, and ours involved Jake and an alewife. As he was unhooking one of the lake trout, the fish gave a hard cough and launched a whole undigested alewife straight out of its mouth and into Jake’s leg. Dead bait, point blank range. Jake about jumped out of the boat, the rest of us nearly fell over laughing, and Kevin just grinned like he had seen it a hundred times, which he probably has.
It is actually a useful little window into why these fish were biting. Lake trout and salmon out here gorge on alewives, and when a fish is coughing up bait that fresh, it tells you you are fishing right in the middle of the grocery store. That is exactly where you want to be.
Worth the Early Alarm
We were back at the dock by early afternoon with a cooler full of fish, the mate cleaning and filleting them for us, and three guys already talking about when we could do it again. Jesse wants a rematch with that first rod. Jake wants to keep his pants alewife free. I just want another morning on water that clear with the skyline at my back.
If you have never fished Lake Michigan, put it on the list. And if you want a captain who knows where the fish live and runs a tight, fun boat, Kevin and the King Fisher crew earned every bit of the tip. Tight lines.
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