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If you really want to know your fishes, you can buy this poster by Wisconsin Sea Grant with illustrations of artist Joseph R. Tomelleri. It’s available from most state Sea Grant programs, or by phoning 608-263-3259 or logging onto www.seagrant.wisc.edu/ greatlakesfish/poster.html3 of 3
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From Stringer to Frying PanHere’s a catch worth reeling in … Minnesota Sea Grant offers a small brochure with some big information on preparing, storing, thawing and cooking those Great Lakes fish.“Cooking Your Catch,” individual copies of which are free, even answers that age old question about old-age fish: Can we still eat this after it’s been in the freezer for (you fill in the number) months? The fattier the fish, by the way, the shorter the freezer shelf life. Check out ordering information at 218-726-6191 or see the website at www.seagrant.umn.edu/fish/cooking.htmlby Tom Joseph
You see that?” says the Fish Magnate as we crest a hill and get our first glimpse of what he calls “the Big Pond.”
“When an ant belches, you’ll see the ripple a mile away. It’s a gorgeous day for April g’darn 20th.”
Reaching the boat ramp at Black River Harbor, north of Bessemer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I see that he’s right. Lake Superior is flat calm. A good thing, since we’re about to fish it from his 14-foot Starcraft. He plants a kiss on the 30-horse Evinrude and pulls. The motor coughs asthmatically and dies.
“Not to worry,” he grins. “The Minnow has never failed me yet.”
“Sure,” I croak, not very convinced. For one thing, I’ve just noticed that there’s no backup aboard, not even oars. For another, I’m remembering that his boat is named after the shipwrecked vessel from “Gilligan’s Island.” Oh, well, at least there will be plenty of provisions. The Fish Magnate’s a big man.
Ray Sibley grew up on Sunday Lake in Wakefield, about 15 miles from here. He was a high school track star, a sprinter, made the trip “below the bridge” to the state championship in Detroit. On the far side of 50 now, he’s got a bad back and worse knees and a thick neck, torso and hands. He’s underestimating a bit when he says he needs to shed 60 pounds.
Yet there’s a grace to his movements, even on gimpy legs, that evokes the athlete.
The nickname, by the way, is my twist. Ray actually calls himself the Fish Magnet. But to me, he’s the magnate, the Big Man of Fishing.
The booming voice that thunders out of his barrel chest can be intimidating, but his three grown kids know Papa’s always good for a 50. Though he and Jo Ann are empty nesters, Ray keeps a big garden just so he has plenty to give away. The naturally upturned corners of his broad mouth expose him for the teddy bear of a man he really is.
The Fish Magnate hasn’t fished the world. He occasionally takes a Canadian trip to do some walleye population control or to troll with light line for big lakers.
But oh, he knows local water. He’s got a crappie lake where he swears he gets 18-inchers, a bluegill lake stocked with all males that go 13. Truth? All I know is, during the Michigan opener on Lake Gogebic, where he keeps a trailer in the summer and an ice shack in the winter, I’ve caught walleyes with him ‘til my arms ached.
So I tell myself to have confidence, the Fish Magnate knows this side of the Pond as well as anyone. On the way up he told me about one day last year. “The lake was barely rolling, but I told Jumbotron, ‘Pick up the lines.’ Fifteen minutes later, we surfed into the harbor on four-foot swells. I’d seen ’em on the northeast horizon.”
9 a.m.
As we pull out of the harbor, I don my fleece vest and windbreaker, pull on wool pants, in addition to long johns and wool shirt. The Big Pond’s still a tad chilly. Fortunately, we don’t have far to run. A hundred yards past the mouth of the harbor, the Fish Magnate idles the engine down and directs me to throw out the first ski. It’s a homemade job, cut from cedar, with an aluminum rudder set to force the ski out almost at right angles to the boat.
“Flatlining,” he grins again. “Not too many boys know how. They don’t know what they’re missing.”
As I let out the 80 feet of 16-inch nylon chalk line, I inhale the lake air, heavy and damp and pure. The sky is a cloudless, brilliant deep blue; the lake is a mirror. I clip the swivel to the ring piercing the four-foot steel rod set in an oarlock that Ray welded on the Minnow’s bow, then repeat the process with the right ski.
Grabbing the first rod, I let out a three-inch jointed fire tiger Rapala.
“Why no swivel on the line?” I ask.
“That’s a Rapala knot. Check out the action. Good, no?”
It’s true. The lure seems to have a little extra wiggle. Kind of like the Fish Magnate himself.
“New line,” I note.
“Fluorescent green. You can see it better.”
After letting out maybe a hundred yards, I flip the bale.
“More,” he says. “It’s only eight-pound, but we got plenty. I like to get it way behind the boat. There.”
As I stand to reach for the ski line, the Fish Magnate barks, “Sit!” as if he’s talking to Mr. Grizz, his golden retriever.
“Here, use this.” He hands me a golf club shaft onto which he’s welded an aluminum hook. “This year’s improvement,” he crows.
I easily grab the ski line with the hook, attach his specially doctored wire clip, set the eight-pound as directed and let go. The wire clip slides smoothly down the ski line. I set the seven-foot spinning rod in one of the Minnow’s four homemade PVC rod holders. A few minutes later, the other rods are rigged.
“This flatlining on the Pond is a well-kept secret,” the Fish Magnate tells me.
I ask him who else comes out here.
“Not too many. Some of the older Finlanders, a few other guys like Big Steve, Jimmy Eaglebeak Olson, my brother-in-law, Reese, and of course Jumbotron. He’s been out since March this year. Do you believe it?”
Jumbotron is Ray’s younger son, Guy. He’s nearly as big as his old man, who weighs almost exactly twice what I do. I figure that’s probably why I feel like I’m sitting three feet above him in the bow.
“Do you guys ever go out together?” I ask. “Seems like there’d hardly be enough freeboard for the two of you. Matter of fact, I could swear we’re sitting lower in the water than when we left.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ray says, and leans over to touch two bare wires to the battery. A portable bilge pump kicks in. “The Minnow’s got a little crack in the hull.”
Great. Out on Lake Superior in a 14-foot boat with a cracked hull. And a little breeze is picking up from the north. Ray reads my mind. “Not to worry. Settle down. You’ll scare the fish.”
Sure enough, the breeze dies back. These first nice days of April, the ones that give you that irresistible itch to be out on the water, are by definition the best days to fish Lake Superior’s Michigan shore. The wind is light or from the south, making near-shore trolling possible. That’s where the smelt are this time of year, and that’s where the salmon and trout should be, too. The steelhead are spawning, the rest are in for the feast and the warming water.
I begin to peel off layers. It’s 9:30. The sun has some warmth. We troll east towards the Presque Isle in 10 feet of water, pick up our speed to pass three fishermen already in T-shirts. We ask what they’re getting.
“A sunburn.”
Then one of the outside clips releases. I reel in a little coho, maybe 15 inches. I admire his bright silver sheen, then toss him into the cooler, listen to the fi-di-di-di of his flopping.
“One in the box,” I announce cheerfully. The smell and feel of my slime-coated hands are wonderful; I don’t bother to wash off. As I’m de-treble-hooking the landing net, the second outside clip releases. No fish, though.
“No problem. We already got the skunk out of the bag. Let’s retrieve the clips,” the Fish Magnate says.
As I pull the ski in, a third line goes. I quickly throw the ski in the boat, grab the rod from Ray. We net a brown trout, 22 inches and maybe three pounds. The fish are lean this time of year.
“I love them spring fish,” Ray says. “No fat.” He pinches his belly under his wool bib overalls. “Maybe I should spend the winter under water, hey?”
I pay for my hasty pulling in of the ski with a boat full of 16-inch spaghetti that’s as hard to untangle as fishing line. We speculate as to what made the fish hit. Picking up the trolling speed? Moving out a touch?
“You never know,” says the Fish Magnate. He explains that’s why he’s constantly zigzagging in and out, varying his speed, figuring out what works today.
“That’s typical with this kind of fishing. Nothing, then boom, boom, boom. What’s even better is that you never know what you’re going to get next.”
The Fish Magnate begins to list what he’s caught out here. “Coho, browns, lakers, kings, rainbows, Atlantic salmon, humpies, coasters, Skamania, herring. Last week Jumbotron got a five-pound whitefish. You remember hearing about his northern?”
I do. Forty-two inches and 23 pounds. Thought he had a snag. No teeth on the bottom, an ancient fish. It’s on the wall now.
I admit that I’m not familiar with coasters and learn that they’re football-shaped brook trout that reside permanently in the lake. Skamania are a summer-spawning steelhead. Other species have variety. There’s a strain of lake trout called fatties that were planted long ago in Canada to be harvested for fish oil for the Japanese.
“Their belly starts right under their chin. Only way to cook them is if you have a 55-gallon drum to draw off the oil.”
The good lakers are Mackinaws, also called “leaners.” Yesterday, when we drove up here but got chased off the lake by high winds, a guy came in with a laker the exact size of Jumbotron’s northern. Talk about your footballs.
I think about what the Fish Magnate said. Isn’t that the allure of fishing, never knowing what’s going to happen next? It puts you right where you need to be, smack dab in the middle of now. Ray, one hand on the Evinrude, the other holding a ham-and-cheese, has that watery big-as-the- ocean look in his eyes. He’s there.
Between the action and the Fish Magnate’s stories, the day flies. As we circle the mouth of the Presque Isle of Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park, Ray tells me how Eaglebeak once went scuba diving in the river.
“There’s an underground cut with holes 30 to 40 feet deep. That boy came flying out of the water after seeing what’s in there. Thirty-pound northerns, huge walleyes, brook trout, carp. There’s even sturgeon. You want to have fun? Come out and anchor in the mouth in July, fish with worms and slip bobbers.”
I figure if a quarter of the Fish Magnate’s claims are true, it’s worth a try. Of course, 25 percent might be stretching it.
The day gets even warmer, the wind stays dead. My long johns are gone, I’m shirtless. I drop a foot in the water, time how long I can leave it in. Twenty-three seconds. Could we swim the couple hundred feet to shore?
The Fish Magnate shakes his head. “Don’t count on it.”
We talk about the Big Pond. “How far you think it is from here to Thunder Bay?” he asks.
I’ve driven it, an eight-hour trip, so that must be 400 miles. Making allowances for the curve of the lake, I figure 250.
“Try 80,” Ray tells me. Later I check. It’s closer to 150, but still far less than I imagined. So he exaggerated. He’s a fisherman. Loose facts, genuine truth.
“What’s your best day of fishing ever?”
“You mean tonnage? One day up by Wetass Creek we coulda filled the boat with lake trout. You couldn’t go 20 feet without catching one. Had to troll one line. Then again, it can be like this.”
There’s been no action for the last hour.
“Course, five minutes from now we could have our limit.”
As I say, the Fish Magnate is a true fisherman. The best ever moment of fishing is the next one.
We chew sandwiches - it takes Ray three chomps to devour his third - and shoot the breeze about White Pine Mine, where the Fish Magnate worked in the ’80s. The employees owned 20 percent. When the mine closed, Ray got a nice settlement.
“A lot of guys kissed theirs away in three days on boats and four wheelers. I put mine in an IRA. It earned.…”
Boom. An outside line goes. A small coho. Boom. Another. I offer the Fish Magnate the rod, but he refuses.
“Nah, I’ve caught plenty of these.…”
I play the fish more slowly than necessary, savoring the singing of the line, the splashes and dashes of the run. By 2:30 we’ve caught another on the way past Black River Harbor, then trolled the half-mile west to Hippo Head, a big rock peeking out of the water. There we hit a fish out deeper. He noses down. Takes me 15 minutes to pull in the laker. Six in the box.
A flock of sea gulls sits on the lazy lake. Once in a while a few fly, then swoop at a smelt. I ask why the gulls aren’t bothering us.
“The Finlanders think they’re albino ducks,” says the Fish Magnate, sighting in with an imaginary rifle. “They keep their distance from boats around here.” Is he serious? I don’t know. It doesn’t much matter.
We’re off the water an hour later with five cohos, two browns and the laker. And a sunburn. Not bad for April g’darn 20th. As gallons of the Big Pond drain out of the trailered Minnow, the Fish Magnate says, “I’m about ready to get me a new boat.”
I nod. Same thing he said last year. And the year before.
We crest the hill and look back at the lake. Ray marvels at the calm. “Those ant belches, you can’t see them from a mile. You can see them from four.”
“I hate to say it, but for once, Fish Magnate, you’re wrong.”
“How’s that?”
“Those aren’t ants. They’re smelts.”
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Tom Joseph lives, writes and, of course, fishes in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in anthologies and national magazines.