The Sheboygan River was fun

Stephen Rose, George Reynolds and I fished the Sheboygan River today, and we saw way more fish than anyone should expect to see in one day on a river.

Salmon are crazed, sex-driven zombie-monster fish that are incredibly-impressive natural specimens. They are, as I may have mentioned before, very impressive. Nearly every fish we saw today was a King Salmon. They are all, impressively, equivalently-shaped and sized, meaning they are big. I would guess each one is fifteen pounds and about thirty inches long. That’s big. They can move from the mouth of the river to the falls in Kohler in less than twenty four hours. They are made to swim vigorously up stream, through fast and slow water, jumping if necessary. They are not concerned about anything aside from finding a nice place and a nice partner, and once those two conditions have been met, just leave them the eff alone because it’s time to squeeze out some eggs and milt and then die.

Therein lies the conundrum of fishing for lake-run salmon. They aren’t interested in you or your damned flies. Not in the least. In fact they would prefer that you all just go away. Getting a salmon to “eat” your fly is, for me anyway, nigh-on impossible, because they aren’t hungry! They can get pissed, or curious. And then they might snap at your fly. And then you will have hooked one in the mouth. But there’s this thing called “foul hooking”, which is different from “Fair Hooking”. Foul hooking means you have hooked a fish somewhere away from the fish’s mouth, like the dorsal fin or the tail fin. And this happens a lot because when you drift or swing flies through a pod of salmon the hook often sweeps over them. What you’re trying to do is sweep the fly in front of them so they get pissed and snap at it, but as often as your fly goes in front of them, it also goes past them and over them.

So then you have a fifteen pound, thirty-inch-long muscle hooked in a spot that allows the fish to have incredible resistance to your direction of pull. But you don’t necessarily know if the damned thing is hooked right or wrong, so you play the fish (instead of just snapping the fly off your line with a mighty pull). You play the fish because it feels like the biggest freaking monster you’ve ever had on your line and you just want to hoist that thing up a look at it, and then get your picture taken.

So you play it and play it and play it and it goes up and down the river and hunkers down in the holes and mingles with other salmon who say “Nice new piercing, Larry” and so forth, and then maybe when you get a look at it you see that the brilliant monster is hooked on a fin, and then you feel like a jack-ass because you’ve tormented this fish for thirty minutes only to find out the poor, sex-crazed, dying beast wasn’t sportingly hooked in the mouth, and then you can snap it off.

At least that’s what a guy like me, who hasn’t done this much, has come to conclude.

All that being said, the Sheboygan River in Kohler is a very beautiful place that I intend to visit again. And I am grateful to George for his hospitality, patience, flies and sandwiches, and I hope to repay the favor to him soon in the Driftless or the Brule or who-knows-where! I had a great day, and feeling the tug of those beasts on the line is really a thrill, no doubt about it.

Also, I’m not sure, but I think I hooked that fish I’m holding below in the mouth. Honestly I was too thrilled to have it in my hands to remember from whence the hook came as George was removing it. I felt like I’d just gotten off a bucking bronco and was happy to have that prize in my hands. These salmon are wonderful, beautiful (and impressive) creatures and watching them today was a great experience.

 

A female King Salmon in the Sheboygan River

 

George and me in Sheboygan

 

The reason for the season – Salmon Eggs

 

Stephen with a lunker on

 

A thirty minute wrestling match with a large fish in Sheboygan