KOHLER – Sunrise was dimmed Monday by a veil of fog and woolen cloud cover over the Sheboygan River.
But it wasn’t muted.
As Jerrad Kalmerton and I hiked along a riverside path at 6:45 a.m. the new day was heralded with an explosive sound track.
“Ker-splash!”
Every 20 seconds or so, a large finned form leapt out of the water and crashed back in.
At turns one would gracefully porpoise along the surface. Then another would turn on its side and rapidly thrash its tail.
“That was a 10,” said Kalmerton of Howards Grove after a particularly heavy fish belly-flopped at mid-river.
The watery performance was being put on by chinook salmon. The fish, which spend most of their life traveling and feeding in the open water of Lake Michigan, were now heeding Mother Nature and living out their final chapter on a spawning migration.
It’s a rite of autumn taking place here on the Sheboygan and other tributaries around the lake.
Kalmerton, a friend who also is a licensed fishing guide, charter captain and co-owner of Wolf Pack Adventures, is an expert at catching salmon throughout the open water seasons.
For most of the year that means trolling the Big Pond.
But come early October, the best bet is in the rivers.
Instead of piloting a 30-foot boat and setting lines on downriggers and planer boards, it’s wading and casting.
“Every which way is fun,” Kalmerton said. “Here, this is hand-to-hand battling with them. These fish are big and strong and it makes for a really intense experience.”
Kalmerton buys a pass that allows access along a private property on the river. We made our way down and waded through a section bordered by golf courses.
One, the Meadow Valleys course at Blackwolf Run, draws on the angling theme for the names on its starting and finishing holes: #1 is Fishing Hole and #18 is Salmon Trap.
“There’s nothing in the United States that has the look and feel of this course,” famed golf course architect Pete Dye said of Blackwolf Run.
That sentiment must only be multiplied in autumn when chinook are splashing through its running water hazard.
The conditions Monday in the Sheboygan were just about perfect. Recent rains had raised the water slightly and helped draw more fish into the river.
But it wasn’t too high or fast; we were able to safely wade in each section we fished.
And the salmon were present in very good numbers.
Some modern forms of fishing rely on sonar and other forms of electronics.
We needed only our ears and eyes.
There’s a reason chinook are also called “king” salmon.
“Ka-splash!”
They are the biggest of all salmon species. And in Lake Michigan, they’ve proven to be the most tenacious survivors of any introduced salmon or trout.
About 7 we set up at the top of a deep hole and drifted skein beneath floats. We set our rigs so the bait, which is cured salmon eggs, hovered just above the bottom as it made its way downstream.
By 7:15 I was hooked up to a finned freight train.
The fish ran downstream through a riffle and angled toward a fallen tree in the shallows.
Fortunately it didn’t get wrapped around a branch and it swam back toward mid-stream.
After 10 more minutes of to-and-fro, it came to net. Kalmerton estimated the egg-laden hen to be 18 pounds and a relatively recent arrival in the river.
We released her to continue her quest.
The chinook is part of a suite of non-native trout and salmon – including coho salmon and brown and rainbow (or steelhead) trout – stocked in Lake Michigan since the late 1960s.
The lake’s native top predator, the lake trout, had collapsed by the late 1950s under deteriorating environmental conditions and mortality related to invasive sea lampreys.
The lake trout’s demise occurred as numbers of invasive alewife skyrocketed. The small, silver forage fish died off in the millions each year, fouling beaches from Kenosha to Door County.
In what began as a grand fisheries experiment, the non-native trout and salmon were placed in the lake to feed on the alewife and provide a sport fishery.
It worked and has been hailed as one of the most successful in 20th-century North American fisheries management.
Not only were alewife reduced to non-nuisance numbers, a thriving charter and sport fishery took hold in harbors around the lake.
Despite decades of intensive stocking and millions of dollars in research and management efforts – including ongoing sea lamprey control – by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the lake trout struggled to re-establish a naturally-sustaining population in Lake Michigan.
There are signs of some lake trout success in certain areas.
But the chinook is a different story. Tough, adaptable and aggressive, the fish has become “naturalized” to the lake and now reproduces in impressive numbers.
According to data from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, natural reproduction of chinook has continually increased over the last few decades and current estimates suggest naturally produced smolts account for approximately 50% to 70% of the annual chinook salmon recruitment in Lake Michigan.
Most of the successful chinook reproduction occurs in rivers in Michigan and Ontario.
The water in Wisconsin tributaries to Lake Michigan is mostly too warm, too silty and too low in oxygen for salmon eggs to hatch and fry to survive.
The DNR collects eggs and milt from adults which is used by the Wisconsin hatchery system to raise the next year class of salmon for stocking.
But the fish don’t know that.
They swim up rivers and do what their instincts tell them to do.
As a boy growing up in Racine in the 1970s, I watched in awe when chinook began returning to the Root River.
A river that formerly held only common carp and bullheads now had a Pacific Ocean-strain of fish.
We learned to catch them on chunks of Velveeta cheese fished on the bottom. I never figured out why the kings took the cheese in their mouth, but they did and that was enough for a young angler.
Times have changed. Kalmerton has most success fishing skein or flies for the spawning chinook.
What remains the same is the character of the fish.
Here on the Sheboygan, they charge up through the harbor, navigate the lower river and into the runs and pools and riffles in the scenic Wisconsin countryside where they gather by the dozens on redds to carry out their age-old spawning behavior.
“It’s pretty impressive to see up close,” Kalmerton said.
After catching a half dozen kings on skein, we changed tactics at 9 and moved downriver to a series of riffles.
Fish were thick in the 1- to 3-foot-deep water.
We put the baitcasting gear away and picked up 10-weight, 10-foot-long fly rods. We used the graphite rods to drift colored beads and egg patterns to the fish.
Although the chinook have stopped feeding, they still react instinctively to certain baits, lures and flies. A red egg yarn pattern was too much for the fish Monday.
Once I had the right amount of weight on the leader, about every third drift was met with a strike.
The ensuing action reminded me that these fish keep plenty of fight even when they leave the lake.
One male estimated at 27 pounds took at least 25 minutes to land.
Kalmerton and I each hooked, landed and released three more fish and called it a morning about noon.
The river corridor was also visited this day by a golf outing of note.
As Kalmerton and I hiked up a path we paused to let a conga line of golf carts pass.
The event included a slew of former Green Bay Packers players and some current team officials and employees.
Among those who glided past were Dave Robinson, Bill Schroeder and Wayne Larivee.
When Robinson, the Packers Hall of Fame linebacker who won three NFL titles with the team in the 1960s, including the first two Super Bowls, saw us in our angling gear he slowed to have a few words.
“I ought to go fishing with you, that’s what I really ought to do today,” Robinson said, smiling.
Then he gave a subtle shake of the head and continued toward the first tee.
The invitation is open any time, Mr. Robinson.
The tenacious king salmon will likely be coming back for many, many autumns to come.
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