NUMENON |
PONDERING CORE ESSENCE
NUMENON |
Such a lucky guy to have a daughter like K! (For so many reasons, beyond but including the particulars of this account). She'd arranged a trip for me to visit her in the San Francisco area and share some camping and fishing. After a long Maine Winter, I was more than ready to do so! After just a bit of back and forth, we settled on an itinerary that offered convenient and pleasant fun. We could relax and enjoy each other's company for a few days within an easy drive from her Bay-area home, with the prospect of catching some nice trout! And that we did! Lodging and fishing were available at Collins Lake, and Captains CK and W at FHS.com provided a stable and comfortable platform in our quest for some trout. It was a low-stress approach all the way around, and we appreciated it! Campfires, eagles, ospreys, blacktail deer, nice gear, clean beds, hot showers, ice cream and each other's company; all enhanced by plenty of trout reaching six pounds. It was a "hella" long weekend! Such a lucky guy to have shared not just this, but several decades of shared outdoor experiences with my kids. Somehow, I thought K was all grown up and ready to serve as First Mate aboard Mrs. Paul, my first vessel, 25 years ago. I wasn't quite right about that, but we still spent plenty of time on the water and we had more than our share of fun and success. We got safely home every time, too! It was an awesome gift to share these current moments, but especially so in the reflection of our previously shared experiences. Thanks, K! 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 Like millions of others, I've recently had cause to hunker down at home. I've used this time to take on some chores that would have otherwise been left undone, and this has produced some beneficial results. For instance, unlike previous moves, I've culled some nonessential objects, and I've (nearly) hyper-organized the remaining goods. I've actually cleaned the extra stall in the garage, and one can walk about most of the cellar without fear of tripping or toppling a pile of precious cargo. One of the specific (but minor) benefits of these activities was finding a variety of old maps and files, including variations of my fishing journals dating back as far as 1988. I've thumbed through these, and I thought I'd commemorate some of the more meaningful sessions that were contemporaneously documented. So, here it goes; but please forgive the photography, these are pictures of old pictures! January 11, 1988 Gull Lake - Richland, Michigan For Christmas of 1987, I received the gift of an 8-inch Mora ice auger. I'm still using it today, but I used it a ton in that first ice season of 1987-1988. Prior, I had relied on the kindness of others with augers, had used old holes, or had chopped my way through the ice with a chisel or spud. In 1988, I was in West Michigan for graduate school, and I had convenient access to Gull Lake in Kalamazoo County. It's a beautiful lake with big fish potential (especially for pike and bluegills), and at the time was being used as a potential brood stock lake for Atlantic Salmon. Needless to say, I spent more than my fair share of time on Gull's ice that winter. My notes indicate that January 10, 1988 was cold, sunny, and productive (for others) for pike on the "Bible Bay" portion of Gull. I lost a running pike on a tip-up; it had eaten a dead, headless supermarket smelt near the bottom. Otherwise, I went fishless, but apparently I noticed somebody catching an Atlantic; and I gleaned the fact that it had eaten a gold teardrop jig tipped with a waxworm intended for bluegills. I also learned that it had eaten about 15 feet below the ice; we were standing over about 35 feet of water. I spent the afternoon of January 11, 1988 on that same ice, in somewhat warmer (27-30 degrees F), but cloudier, conditions. The pike fishing was slower, and I moved about with a jigging Rapala targeting pike and/or with a white/orange teardrop with wax-worm targeting deep 'gills. About mid-afternoon, I moved my small jig up to 12-feet below the ice (I had marked the distance on my line prior to leaving the house) and kept it in constant motion. In the next hour, I went 2-for-3 on Atlantic Salmon between 15 and 22 inches. These were tremendous fish for me at that time, and any ice fishing success was welcomed. Using a 4.5-foot ultralight rod with 4-pound test baited with various jigs, spoons, waxies and minnows at various locations around Gull Lake produced 22 salmon to about 26 inches over the duration of the season. That reliable fishery continued for several years, and I expanded my chase to the open waters of spring and fall. Unfortunately, a hatchery disease terminated this experimental fishery. The good news is that Atlantics took hold as a result of this program in the St. Mary's River at the outlet of Lake Superior as well as at other isolated locations around Lakes Michigan and Huron. I was even fortunate to catch (and recognize) several Atlantic Salmon in later years while trolling for Great Lakes salmon and trout. Interestingly enough, each of these was caught in Grand Haven, despite the fact that I fished up and down the West Michigan coast every season. February 10, 1988 Gull Lake - Richland, Michigan Fishing that same bay in the afternoon, with an approaching snow storm that would dump about 12 inches of snow overnight, I pulled 10 bluegills from the same hole in the hour before darkness. All were within a foot of the bottom in about 35 feet of water. What was remarkable; their size. I recorded one over 10 inches and a pair over 9. I remember tracing the outline of the 10-incher in my notebook; all that remains are the traces of paper that cling to the wire binder when one rips out a page. Oh well, those were among the last gills that I kept and cleaned for myself; and among the last BIG bluegills I've encountered in Michigan. Gull Lake taught me to respect bluegills and those who pursue them. I just got too busy chasing larger fish! December 6, 1995 Grand River - downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan I'd been in Michigan for about a decade by this point, and I still had a bad case of Trout and Salmon Fever. But I'd become dismayed with local steelheading; the prevailing methods of long rods, light line and bait (roe) had produced only sporadic success for me, and I'd had too many fish escape via missed hooksets or broken lines. But when an older co-worker finally invited me to join him for an afternoon on the river (I had faithfully and selflessly helped him launch his boat a dozen times or more during my lunch break), I was quick to say Yes!. Fred offered a different way of targeting these fish, swinging homemade French spinners on stout gear with 17-pound line. I wanted to give that a try. Plus, from his boat, I didn't have to worry so much about water levels and wading; this is a treacherous stretch of river bottom, and I only confidently waded during lower water flows. Let me state this; December 6, 1995 was bright and sunny in Grand Rapids, but brutally cold and windy. I expected that Fred would cancel and reschedule; but I guess I really didn't know him at that point. Not only would we be going, but because he had blocked off 4 hours of vacation time for the trip, we would be fishing for a minimum of four hours. (Travel, launch, gear prep, etc. were all in addition to the fishing.) I'll be damned; at our first spot near the top of the Center Run below the 6th Street dam, my quietly swinging size-4 spinner hesitated. I set the hook, and instead of a snag, it was a fish! It turned out to be a 9-pound hen, and it was my biggest river trout to date. Apparently, I missed another, and Fred took two for a combined 17 pounds during our inaugural session together. Good action on nice fish! I don't necessarily recall those details, but this day changed the way I fish for river trout. I've rarely fished for steelies or trout with bait, since. I love swinging spinners, streamers and plugs for trout of any type! My relationship with Fred continued for a few more years, until he retired. He seriously outfished me in our time together (he landed 13 steelies, while I only landed 8 while together in his boat), but the records clearly indicate that I had a better landing percentage than he did, and while I netted a whopping 13.5-pounder on January 19, 1997 for him, I caught an even larger steelie approaching 15 pounds while wading with Fred in early April of that year. So, I held my own with my Steelhead Mentor in our time together. July 25, 1999 Lake Michigan - Manistee, Michigan In the late 1990's, most of my fishing time was spent chasing Trout and Salmon on Lake Michigan. I'd experienced Spring Brown Trout from shore and started chasing them in earnest from my original boat, Mrs. Paul, in April 1990. Other friends had slightly bigger boats, and I'd join them whenever possible; and in August 1996, I added a downrigger to my boat. Each trip was an adventure. At first, catching a fish from Lake Michigan's empty vastness seemed miraculous. But, as I learned more about the fish and the habitat, I was able to eliminate water and focus on areas with higher probability of success. As I gained experience and confidence, I added tools and perspective, reaching a point, at about this time, where I'd developed opinions and methods that built on my success and failures. And so on this beautiful morning, I headed out with good friend, DC, aboard his 18-foot Lund Pro-V. Equipped with two (!) down riggers and six (!!) rod holders, we steamed out of port and headed south. It was a Tournament Day out of Manistee, and most boats headed north. We wanted some quiet water for ourselves. The first thing I did when we settled into out patch of water in depths of about 100 feet was to develop a temperature profile with my new, hand-held thermometer/pressure transducer gadget. I sent it down on a downrigger and slowly retrieved it; I then, for the first time, recorded the temperature for my own purposes on Lake Michigan in my trusty, waterproof notebook. The resulting profile was not encouraging; the water was 70 degrees down to 60 feet; 60 degrees down to 85 feet; and 52 degrees at the end of our cable and recording capability, 100 feet below the surface. And while not encouraging, this did eliminate a lot of water, and so we set our lines deep. We quickly caught two fish on green glow spoons, 80 to 105 feet down on downriggers. The first was a 4-pound lake trout, but the second was a hyper-aggressive, giant King Salmon. This beast later scaled out at 26 pounds on the DNR scale. A fish like that made our day, if not our season! Later in the morning, we found another pod of deep fish over about 120 feet of water. These all ate spoons, too, off our deepest rigger set at 105 feet. These included a bigger, 6-pound lake trout and King Salmon of 2 and 10 pounds. The moral of this story, as embraced by me in my subsequent salmon fishing efforts, was to eliminate water via data and then utilize the best available, remaining option. In this case, by fishing much deeper than we were used to at the time, we were producing some quality action. And we knew why! But the corollary to the moral tale is that one never knows; and since we were allowed two rods a piece, we'd been trailing a magnum Green Dolphin Dreamweaver spoon, presented on a full 10 colors of lead core line, off the back of our spread. It was out of the way and fishing for us throughout; why not leave it out there, even if we thought it might not be reaching the desired depth and temperature? Because it was what we had for gear and options at the time, but this lure was also swimming in a zone where we were marking a lot of baitfish. We knew salmon would feed "out of temperature" for short periods. Maybe they were feeding on the bait visible on our sonar? At about 8:30 AM that morning, the full core rod jumped to life for the only time that session. After an epic battle, 32 pounds, 9 ounces of King Salmon hit the deck; only 38 inches long, it was in prime shape. This is the largest documented salmon that I have ever caught. This fish just about broke the heart of the guy at the tackle shop where we weighed in. He knew we'd caught it out of temperature; he knew we were not in the tournament and that we'd missed out on several thousand dollars; and he, himself, aspired to catching a 30-pounder, but had not. It probably hurt him a bit to see two rubes catching such a fish; but there was clearly more to the catch than he believed. We'd eliminated water; we'd believed the data we were given; we'd maximized our ability to execute; and we'd slightly hedged our bets. Seasonality; temperature; bait; and presentation. That's "all" there is to Great Lakes Salmon fishing success! From this date on, I was a Salmon Addict and a Data Junkie. My confidence and success both soared; and other than vacation-time stripers, I pursued little else for the next decade or so. August 13 and 14, 2006 Casco Bay, Maine My striper fishing experiences started in 2001, but my access to them was limited by time and geography. For the first decade of the new Millennium, virtually all of my striper fishing was limited to the quiet waters of Maine's Casco Bay, and virtually all of that experience was based from the float at the end of our property association's landing. I enjoyed my time down there (I still do!), and I spent virtually every possible extended dawn and dusk on the float, trying to coax some stripers to bite. By 2006, I'd made most of the mistakes that were available to me in this pursuit, and had settled into a pattern of presenting available live baits on appropriately light tackle. I expected success, and I had caught more stripers than I'd ever imagined. I still believed in fishing at dawn and dusk, but I'd started paying more attention to other conditions, such as tide cycle and water temperature. Everything I suspected I'd learned came together on the evenings of August 13 and 14, 2006. In two, three-hour sessions over these two evenings, I fooled 60 stripers into biting and landed 43 of them. These were not large, topping out at a recorded 25.5 inches, but they kept me busy from 7 PM into full darkness each night. Sandworms under lighted slip floats did the trick. The conditions I'd keyed in on included the second half of the falling tide at this location; current flowing to the east; and water temperatures in the very low 60s. I was learning and confirming that "Quadrant II" on the Tide Clock rules at this location, and I've paid extra special attention to specific tide stages at specific locations ever since; I've learned that any spot can turn totally "on" or "off" based on the the very specific conditions at any given spot at any given tidal stage. Developing a Milk Run of successful spots based on tide cycle is a primary strategy of mine, now. As if to prove my point, the next evening, as the timing of the favorable tide and light conditions started to diverge, I caught only three small stripers. The biters had moved through and were undoubtedly wreaking havoc somewhere else! And I was stuck on the dock! 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
June 2024
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