Carole and I took a couple days of cabin time this week and while there I wandered down to the breakwater to toss some lures and see what was willing to come out and play.
I walked out to the dogleg in the breakwater and took a couple casts in an area referred to as "Coho Corner" where some sunken structure about a cast away creates a haven for Cohos to hang out but I was pretty certain that Cohos were still back in the Duluth basin given the really cold water yet at Two Harbors....41 degrees yet. Thinking that Lake Trout may be out off the end I went straight from the corner to the end and made a cast to the deeper water with no notice from anything. On my second cast I was waiting for the lure to hit bottom with the bail open so the lure wouldn't tether and noticed the line going off the reel way faster than a lure drop would allow so I closed the bail and let the line tighten on its own....which took about a millisecond. Right off I knew I had a fish but it didn't really feel like much and actually came right into the breakwater without a ton of struggle so I figured Laker, as they like to hit on the drop. As soon as I saw the fish my mind got pepped up a hair as it was much larger than I thought initially and it had a long white belly like a Laker, but then this critter turned and did about a 100 yard non-stop run that ended in a jump that completely cleared the water. The reel in, run stuff went on four more times before the fish finally relented a little and I could get the net in the water....only to discover that the net was maybe a tad short for this fish. I managed to get the fish in the net and on the breakwater before I realized it was a Steelhead. Now I've caught a ton of Superior Steelhead but they've always been in the two to five pound range. Clearly this one had that size eclipsed. I had no tape to measure and certainly no scale but I did have the phone and grabbed a quick picture but found I didn't have enough arm length to get the entire fish in the picture. I wanted a decent length so I took a dab of blood off a finger [don't ask] and laid the fish on the breakwater next to my rod and managed to get a good smear on the rod as reference before the fish went ballistic laying there. Since Steelhead are protected I needed to get it back in the water and made sure he'd swim away ok, which it did.
Back at the cabin I measured the distance from buttcap to the smear and had just a pinch under 41 inches. Using Lake Trout lengths/weights charts from past catches [steelhead run almost identical in physical size and shape to the trout] I came up between 10 and 12 pounds on this fish and I'm pretty certain the weight is about right if not maybe a hair short.
Lake Superiors water is too cold for many fish like Steelhead and Coho or King Salmon to attain weights like they do in Lake Michigan. This is my personal best Steelhead and as I look back on the short time with it I wonder just how old this guy was. He was still dumping milt even though his spring spawning colors had begun to fade some, but still clearly visible on the cheeks. He had no clipped fins or mandible clip so I think it was a natural. In the end is really doesn't matter because he went back to his world and I went back home empty handed but happy. Somewhere inside I think the fish is happy as well. We came. We played. And maybe we'll meet again.
