NUMENON |
PONDERING CORE ESSENCE
NUMENON |
Officially under home quarantine, I find there's an abundance of opportunity for screen time. I thought I'd put some of that time towards the interests of Citizen Science, and I have embarked upon my quest to become a Herring King. In October 2019, when I finally learned what my address in Massachusetts would be, one of the first things I noted about my new neighborhood was the proximity of the Mystic Lakes. As I sought information on the fishing opportunities they might offer, I quickly found a link to the Mystic River Watershed Association and their stewardship of the local anadromous herring run. While my initial thoughts were self-centered and focused on the potential for herring-hound stripers to be chasing bait nearly to my doorstep, as I poked around on their website, I became interested in their data and the possibility of participating in their herring quantification efforts. Below, you can see that the local run has generally increased in recent years. To me, the most interesting data reveals the timing of the run(s), and the importance of local weather, water temperature and (possibly) moon phase to the number of active fish over the course of the season. I have already optimistically fished below the dam separating Upper from Lower Mystic Lake a few times. Perhaps overly optimistically and prematurely, but surely there's a good chance that I will eventually run into some stripers (or perhaps some real bucketmouth bass) with an appetite for herring here. Regardless, I want to be there when it goes down! My last trip to the dam (chronicled at the April 26, 2020 entry at www.numenonfunfishing.com/numenonfunfishing) featured some cormorants in addition to the bald eagle(s) and the osprey I am used to seeing here. They all expected some fish to be around. The historical graphs above seem to indicate that the local run here has likely started, but really hasn't kicked in. Water temperatures still need to creep up just a tiny bit, we need some sustained sunshine, and I need to pay continued attention to moon phase. Let favorable conditions coincide during the few days preceding a full moon, and I suspect I might have a chance at some quality swim-bait or topwater action, close to home! Meanwhile, I am spending some time helping to estimate the herring runs for 2019 and 2020 at www.mysticherring.org/video#/ . I am confident in my ability to carefully observe and count, and I enjoy simply seeing the herrings swim by. After about 250 short videos and over 6,000 herrings counted, my time helped refine the estimated run for 2019 and the associated margin of error. Science! Double meanwhile, I became aware (via a comment on a recent On the Water magazine article) of a similar effort for Town Brook in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Their live camera is located at www.plymouth-ma.gov/marine-and-environmental-affairs/pages/fish-camera There have been plenty of live herring to observe so far in 2020 in this smaller, warmer watershed. I've lent time to their counting efforts, too, and I am curious how the magnitude of this run will compare to that documented on the Mystic. I never thought I'd ever aspire to be a Herring King. I also never thought I'd be quarantined during a pandemic. While these are indeed strange times, I guess this is just one way for me to make the most of them. Pondering the questions of core essence and finding meaning in unexpected ways
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With the current, sensible restrictions on travel and making contact with loved ones, I'm not presently generating too much material that I feel is worth writing about. Most of my musings are oriented towards the future, but who really knows what the future holds, or in what time frame? There will be time to share these thoughts and the subsequent actions they will have spurred at another time. However, I did enjoy looking back at my old records and recollecting some of my past antics a couple of posts ago. So, here I turn to the past, again, and present a few other formative, fondly remembered periods in my fishing history***, based on upon contemporaneous records that I had maintained and have now recovered. Big Fish Dominance; 2003 - 2005 My first fish in Michigan (pictured at top) was a teenager of a King Salmon off the Grand Haven pier in mid-September, 1985. This was the biggest and best-fighting fish I'd ever encountered, and I was hooked! I did a lot of pier fishing between 1985 and 1990, when I bought my first boat. Between 1990 and 1995 or so, though, just about all of my Big Lake ventures were along the shoreline for brown trout in April or May. This was fun, but limiting. In 1996 or so, I added a single down-rigger to Mrs. Paul, and between 1996 and 2002, I really pursued Great Lakes trout and salmon with vigor and passion. In 2003, I purchased Numenon. With her superior seaworthiness and up-to-date rigging, I was able to really chase these fish, given at least reasonable weather conditions. 1. Ludington's Gander Mountain Offshore Classic, July 12-13, 2003 Numenon made her tournament debut here, and made a mark for herself in the first three hours of the tournament. Fishing shorthanded, with only good friend EG in the boat with me, we knew that combined limits of trout and salmon (10 fish a day, with only 6 salmon) might be difficult to accomplish with at least 150 other boats competing for the same fish. We decided to focus on the "Big Fish" aspect of the tournament, while specifically targeting mature King Salmon. These decisions paid off, handsomely, as we started on a pretty good run of tournament success. "The Point" about seven miles north of Ludington's harbor is fabled salmon territory, and with over 150 boats chasing money, prestige and bragging rights, conditions there at the start of the tournament were super crowded! These conditions brought out the worst in many, and were not enjoyable, at all. But fish were obviously being caught, and we really didn't have a viable backup plan, so we continued to grind it out, here. After a couple of fishless hours, we finally broke the ice with a smallish laker, and at 8:30 AM, we noted that the crowd was thinning out, as boats left in search of offshore trout. In my experience, the biggest salmon are vulnerable between 8 and 9 AM. Sure, they bite well during the dark hours surrounding dawn, but so is everything else. You might be busily catching ordinary trout and salmon during prime time. But, the big girls need to continue eating, and I've often caught the biggest salmon of the day during Second Breakfast. At about 8:40 AM, our deepest rigger rod jumped. Loaded with a dark green flasher/fly combination, 85 feet down over about 92 feet of water, I grabbed it quickly and wound tight to the fish before it knew it was hooked. When it screamed off, into the distance, we knew we were on to a very good fish, and we were doubly glad that the boat traffic had thinned out. The line counter indicated 540 feet of line out; fortunately, there was an open pocket behind our stern. E cleared the other lines while I fought this fish; and we pretty much knew we'd taken the "Big Fish" prize for the tournament when she finally hit the deck. I guestimated a weight "over 25 pounds", while E said 27. As described in the Ludington Daily News, she officially weighed in at a "jaw-dropping" 29.2 pounds, and she was worth $3000 in the Big Fish Division. We fished hard for the rest of the tournament, and despite a very difficult, two-fish day on Sunday, cashed a check for another $400 for our 18th Place team finish, overall. Not a bad debut! 2. Ludington's Gander Mountain Offshore Classic/West Shore Bank Youth Classic, July 9, 2004 We had our first opportunity to fish the "Youth" tournament in 2004; it had been"blown out" in 2003. Crewed by A, both K and M were entered in this "single fish", fun tournament. K was almost 11, had some good Great Lakes fishing experience under her belt, and was ready to jump into the competition. As we approached the southern portion of the shelf off The Point, I set the first rod; a "Secret Weapon Rig" (a downrigger rod with two colors of leadcore line as part of the leader) off the first rigger. It was equipped with a white/glow Bechold flasher and a "green pickle" fly, my most dependable combination for deep Kings. After offering a little guidance on navigation (boats, whitefish nets, etc. presented a variety of hazards), I returned to the back of the boat with Rod No. 2 when I saw the only rod we had fishing start to buck. Once I had the fish off the rigger, I handed the rod to K, who did an expert job in fighting what would turn out to be The Winning Fish. Before 6:30 AM, 23.95 pounds of King Salmon hit the deck, and any pressure I felt for the day was gone. We enjoyed a great and productive day, and we were able to relax. M caught a nice, 13-pound salmon, and we found another group of unpressured fish in the uncrowded, deep water to the south of port. As reported by the Ludington Daily News on Saturday, July 10, 2004, "K... stood head and shoulders above the rest with her 23.95-pound Chinook salmon, caught aboard the Numenon with her father, Steve, who won the big fish division last year with a 29-pound king... The $1,000 savings bond from West Shore Bank didn't diminish her smile, either." As a bonus, later that weekend, we scored a 7th-place finish in the Big Fish Division with a 20.75-pound King. That made Numenon the only vessel/team to score a Top-10 Finish in the Big Fish Division for consecutive years! 3. Ludington's Gander Mountain Offshore Classic/West Shore Bank Youth Classic, July 22-24, 2005 This was probably the pinnacle year for this tournament, with over 250 boats fishing over the course of the weekend. My kids were likely competitive swimming, and EG's kids were growing up, so I fished the Youth tournament out of Numenon with E and his young son, H. We had a nice (albeit choppy) morning, and I got a kick out of watching H pick up his 4th-place prize ($500) for a 15.2-pound King. We'd taken that fish near bottom, on meat in about 85 feet of water, north towards The Point. At the time, H was only 5 years old, or so, clueless and tired after a very early morning. But he'd done a good job holding onto the rod and cranking! And, E and I developed a plan for catching some more fish on meat rigs over the next couple of days; this was our first tournament experience with these flasher/teaser/herring combinations, and we were developing faith in them! The real tournament began the next day, and E and I fished with DC out of his bigger, faster and more spacious Lund, the Trident. On Day 1, we were in excellent position with six Kings to 16.25 pounds and a steelie by 10 AM; we had all day to go find some more chrome. We moved offshore and found the fish; but we couldn't land them! Karma suffered, to say the least; we had missed an opportunity to do our best. Our day was not really helped by the cluster at weigh-in; 250 boats coming in at the same time into a narrow river to weigh their fish was not a good plan. Tremendous thunderstorms overnight resulted in a huge leftover swell; the 6-o'clock start time was met with increasing wind and 6-foot seas. Unbelievably, after waiting a half hour, they sent us out to fish, only to call us back in at about 11 AM. Nobody should have fished, and a 23-foot boat ended up sinking. But we were fortunate to set up on some biting fish, and in the shortened session we went 5-for-8 on Kings, often running just 2 or 3 lines at a time because of conditions. Despite our issues, we finished 19th out of 171 amateur boats and a small check; and in 7th for the Big Fish Division for another Top Ten Finish and another few hundred dollars. (Unfortunately, despite the good group performance for the weekend, this was The End of salmon tournament fishing for DC, and I'm not sure I ever had E and D in the same boat, again. As the kids grew up and my back deteriorated, my participation in these tournaments began to flag. When I hired on at C's in 2012, my serious Great Lakes fishing was just about done.) July 4, 2007 with Tim Almost 13 years after the fact, I still remember this particular session fondly. It boiled down to simple fun, productive fishing with an important friend under difficult conditions. Plus, I received ichthyological accolades and my pants fell off! What a day! Big north and east winds at the end of June had "rolled over" the water along West Michigan's coast. On Sunday, July 1, a friend and I scored just a single, nine-pound salmon during a trip out of Muskegon, Michigan. Our efforts were somewhat constrained on all sides by super-chilled onshore water (in the mid-40s) and an unfavorable offshore forecast. With the local tournament scheduled for July 14 and 15, our practice was off to a slow start! My initial Great Lakes Trout and Salmon Mentor, Tim, joined me aboard Numenon for the 4th of July. We were greeted at the Muskegon pierheads with fog, rain and 4- to 6-foot rollers. With such conditions but favorably cool water temperatures (52-54 degrees F) just outside the river, staging King Salmon were our target. It took an hour, but finally in about 55 feet of water, just to the south of the piers, we doubled up on steelies between 6 and 9 pounds. These had both eaten in the upper 25 feet of the water column. After a bit more of a dry spell, and with nothing on the graph, we decided to turn west and make a total commitment to steel. All six lines were repositioned in the upper 25 feet and I picked up the pace on the throttle. Between 80 and 100 feet of water, in slightly warmer water temperatures of 54-57 degrees, we punched our limit tickets with five steelhead, two kings, two fat coho salmon and a single laker. My notes indicate that a little bit of a scum-line/slick was forming at about 85 feet of water as we took our last five fish. And while our fish never broke the 10-pound mark, they averaged nearly seven pounds; and going fast for surface-oriented fish with gear on the light side was always my preference for fun, Great Lakes fishing. Plus, we were still about the only boat out there! Back at the ramp, a DNR Creel Lady checked our catch. She did not believe my initial report that we had a couple of coho; surely, I was mistaken. But as she checked our catch, she admitted that they were, indeed, coho salmon, the first she'd seen for Muskegon that season. Feeling pretty good about things, I zoomed back to Earth when my pants unexpectedly and quickly raced for my ankles as I pulled the boat onto the trailer. Fortunately, she was absorbed in her paperwork as Tim and I pulled Numenon out of the water for the day. I'd begun my Great Lakes boat-fishing career under Tim's guidance, and I learned a lot from him. Admittedly, a good portion of that was what NOT to do, but we did share many good catches and laughs. This might have been my last fishing trip with Tim. He was retired at this point, and he moved to Las Vegas soon thereafter. There were many reasons to remember this trip, but having shared it with Tim makes it that much more special! November 18, 2007; End of Season Bonus On what would be my last boat-fishing trip of the season, I took advantage of the sun and modest winds to try to find some late-season silver fish. Of course, the conditions on the lake out of Muskegon were a bit more severe than they'd seemed in Grand Rapids, and I quickly found out that, given the easterly winds, I was unable to control my boat, alone, once I reached 40 feet of water, or so. Still, while I was figuring this out, I did catch a two-pound coho salmon on a shallow down-rigger. At least I knew there were some fish to be caught! That week's Muskegon Chronicle had run a story about "shad" running the Mona Lake outlet. I decided to try a Spring Brown Trout Program near this tiny creek. As I approached this area after a several-mile run along the shore, I noticed a bit of a color change and lots of birds! There was definitely something going on! With water temperatures between 44 and 48 degrees F and plenty of bait evident, it really did seem like a Prime Spring Day for Brown Trout! I set a spread with two planer boards and a flat line with various Rapala stick-baits and small spoons. Fishing between 10 and 15 feet of water at basic brown trout speeds of 2.0 - 2.6 mph, I ended my day with ten fish (all released) for a total weight of at least 75 pounds. Only one was a brown trout, but she was a beauty at an estimated nine pounds. A single lake trout came aboard, but the remaining seven fish were all beautiful, chrome steelhead between eight and 10 pounds. Size 7 sinking Rapalas in gold/black and silver/black dominated the catching; these same lures had saved my trip the previous weekend, when they had put the hurt on Benzie County's Crystal Lake's trout population, including both lakers and rainbows. Simply said, what a day! What a way to end the season! Although, when I came back home and reviewed my records, I realized this had left me two fish short of the Century Mark for the 2007 Season. I'd left something on the table, and had I known that, I'd have stayed for a couple more bites! *** Pre-dating my blogging activities Pondering the questions of core essence and finding meaning in unexpected ways |
Steve LachanceVia Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Michigan and now, back to New England! Archives
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