For the Love of Fishing
First, I want to state clearly that any angler who legally catches a brown trout has every right to harvest that fish, adhering to the relevant size and bag restrictions. Whether anglers choose to keep or release a fish is up to them and others should not pass judgment. It’s none of...
It was bound to happen. After almost six weeks of imposed abstinence, it was inevitable. A red-blooded angler can only take so much. There are desires that must be attended to. Since hip replacement surgery earlier this winter, my fishing opportunities were much limited. Open water options were non-existent. Ice fishing...
As we rumbled out onto the ice of Green Bay, where in a normal winter, we would gaze out over a sprawling “WhitefishTown”, all that could be seen was a modest whitefish hamlet, comprised of about a dozen dark red guide shacks surrounded by a menagerie of blue Clams, red...
One of the best ways to get an overall sense of the ice conditions on Green Bay and area lakes is to access the MODIS satellite images of Lake Michigan on the NOAA Coast Watch Great Lakes website. These are real color images developed by the University of Wisconsin Madison Space Science...
Seventeen days. This was the time between the last outing on open water and my first step out on a frozen surface of ice to drill holes. Paul and I made a fruitless quest for brown trout (or whatever would hit our lures) to Egg Harbor early in December. With...
Now the slips are all empty, let the diehards take the stage. The marinas around the county are abandoned. Most boat owners have stored their boats in clean, dry spaces or wrapped them, mummy-like, in protective plastic. The piers that spent the summer months serving watercraft, have been pulled and are...
Perhaps we should not have gone fishing this day. It was overcast and cold with a blustery, biting wind. The forecast was for rain and “the S-word” was even mentioned. What kind of fool goes out in weather like that? On the other hand, this would be our last chance...
I was skeptical as I tentatively backed the trailer towards the broken concrete launch ramp. “I don’t know if this is going to work, Ed” I whined. “Looks pretty shallow.” Ed and I were looking for a way to get the boat out onto the waters of Lake Michigan to...
Call me Sal. I was born in Michigan. Since my youth, I have dwelt in many locations in the Great Lakes region. I spend much of my time in the states surrounding Lake Michigan: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. On occasion, I have found myself in Ontario. I have always...
The world is not really a terrible and dangerous place. Murderers, terrorists and thieves are not lurking around every corner waiting to pounce on you and do you harm. At any moment, most people on the Earth are not dealing with a flood, hurricane, tornado, wildfire or earthquake. Much of...
