Hal Kettunen caught an early birthday present, a 28- inch walleye he pulled from a secret lake. Hal caught the fish the day before his birthday. The fish went from the frying pan straight to his plate and tasted excellent, he said. Photo courtesy ofDean Holt
If my dad didn’t always have a lot of patience, and for many things he had little patience, he never showed it when we were fishing for brook trout. He would take my younger brother and me to various streams and no matter how many times we cast our line into a tree or brush pile he would get our snags out for us. That would be of course, after he had made sure we had first worked hard to unsnag our own lines.
He liked to fish right before a rain because that’s when the fish bit the best. That’s also when the bugs bit the best, so he would slather us in bug dope, making sure we wore long sleeve shirts with an undershirt, long pants, pulled our socks up and made sure we wore our baseball caps to protect us from the bugs.
Dad would fish behind us, and even though we made quite a ruckus as we waded down the brush covered streams, he picked up quite a few trout. His favorite word to us was “Shhhhh.” We did our best to keep our yaps shut but when you are 8-10 years old, there’s a lot to wonder about and comment on.
It didn’t usually take long to get our limit of 10 brookies, throwing back the little ones and keeping the ones from 8 to 12 inches. Some weighed up to a pound and occasionally even heavier when we got into a spot that hadn’t been fished much before.
When we got home we would show our mom our bountiful catch. I didn’t know it then, but she never cared much for fish, but she fooled us with her exclamations of joy.
Dad would cook up a meal of brook trout, the orange meat tasting better than candy.
As Minnesota’s only native stream trout, brook trout are one of our state’s treasures. If you’ve got some time, take your kids fishing for these little spotted beauties. They aren’t hard to catch, fight like mad, taste great, but the memories of the days fishing will outweigh the catch. Here’s to good fishing wherever you cast your line.
Captain Kelly Shepard of North Shore Outdoors Lake Superior Charters reports that lake trout are being caught in the 100- to 170-foot depths using flashers and flies or watermelon and Beaver Flick spoons. Some salmon are around, noted Shepard, piquing the interest of many who love to catch these wily fish.
Also, said Shepard, a big chinook was caught in 160 feet of water this week.
The Lake Superior surface water temperature is in the mid 40s, warming up from the 39 degrees that held through much of June.
Inland, Shepard said that the walleye fishing has slowed down. That doesn’t mean you can’t catch a walleye, it just means you might have to work harder than you normally would. For best results, Shepard suggests using pull crawler harnesses in 15 feet or deeper on all local lakes.
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