Pinks attract anglers in one of world's best salmon fisheries

[Spiel]

Pinks attract anglers in one of world's best salmon fisheries

 

 

Sept. 24, 2009

ERIC SHARP / www.freep.com

 

 

SAULT STE. MARIE, Ontario -- They're a bit late, but the salmon pouring into Michigan rivers from the St. Joseph to the St. Marys will offer some of the finest fishing in the world over the next month at bargain-basement prices.

 

Michigan's Pacific salmon runs rival many in Alaska and are better than most rivers in Lower 48 Pacific streams from whence the ancestors of our fish came.

 

In addition, anglers who come to the St. Marys River rapids on the border between the Soos still have an excellent shot at catching Atlantic salmon that are the quest of the rich in most places.

 

They might even catch one of the rarest fish in the world, a pink-chinook salmon hybrid called a pinook that is found only in the St. Marys system.

 

"When pinks first showed up 30 here years ago, they ran every other year, like they do out west," said John Giuliani, a St. Marys River guide. "Now they run every year. One year there are huge numbers of them. The next there aren't as many, but they're bigger. This is a year for the smaller run, but they're just pouring in right now, and we're seeing a lot that go 4 to 6 pounds."

 

In the past week, anglers also have caught several fish that look like pink salmon but weighed 8 to 12 pounds. Fish that size almost certainly are pinooks, the hybrid that looks like a pink on steroids.

 

"They're amazing," Giuliani said. "They get their size from the chinook side, but they look just like a pink. We're really doing well on them on flies right now, mostly caddis larvae, and there's hardly anybody on the river. We're out here today and there are, what, two other anglers?"

 

Pink salmon were introduced to Lake Superior inadvertently in the 1950s by Canadian fisheries biologists and spread eastward from Thunder Bay, Ontario, along the northern shore until they reached Lake Huron.

 

The St. Marys' runs of pinks and chinooks come from Lake Huron, and the river and its tributaries are the only place in the world where pinks and chinooks are known to hybridize, probably because it's the only place where large numbers of both species spawn at the same time.

 

About 200 miles to the southwest, we had some good chinook fishing a week ago on the flies-only stretch of the Pere Marquette downstream from Baldwin, getting fish 15-20 pounds by sweeping big streamers like gray ghosts and bunnies trough the holes. I also saw anglers catching fish below the fly zone on crankbaits such as Rapalas, Bombers and Thundersticks, a technique that western and Canadian fishermen have used for decades but caught on here only a few years ago.

 

Several anglers I talked with on the phone said fishing has since slowed on the Per Marquette. Due to the long spell of dry weather, relatively few bright fish were coming in from Lake Michigan, and the fish already in the river had been seriously harassed.

 

The St. Joseph River, which enters Lake Michigan near the Indiana line, had a nice push of chinooks earlier this month, but the unusually warm weather of the past 10 days has warmed the water and also slowed that run.

 

I'm hoping the result will be chinook runs in several Michigan rivers that last well into October and even November in the Muskegon and White, which with the St. Marys gets some of the last runs in the Midwest.

 

"The St. Marys gets salmon of some kind almost every month of the year," Giuliani said on a recent outing where we landed chinook, pink salmon, steelhead and resident rainbow trout. The biggest chinooks were about 20 pounds, and the pinks ran 2 to 4 pounds.

 

"We've even caught chinooks in June and July, so we may be seeing the start of a summer run like they get in Alaska. The chinooks just started showing up here three or four days ago, and we'll have them all October," he said. "The chinooks and pinks are really big this year, and I think that's because the smelt are coming back in Lake Huron. I figure we'll have pinks around for another couple of weeks because they started so late."

 

We fished 8-weight fly rods, but anglers do just as well with 9- or 10-foot spinning rods casting spawn or a float-and-flies setup on 8-pound line. Longer rods allow fly and spin fishermen better control of the line in the fast currents.

 

Pinks are fun to catch on a 6-weight fly rod, but while casting to these smaller salmon you'll almost certainly hook up with something a lot bigger, and landing a 20-plus-pound chinook on a 6-weight in fast water is very iffy.

 

A final caveat is to take waders with felt soles or an artificial compound that sticks on slick surfaces. The St. Marys' bottom is pink granite, and after 10,000 years of polishing by swift currents and gravel, it's as smooth as a kitchen counter and as slick as the ice at the Joe Louis Arena after a Zamboni treatment.

[Kinger]

Really great read, thank you.

[hooksetgod]

Good read!! Living on the west coast allows me to fish salmon all year round,and I must say that pinks are my favorite to catch. This year alone I've landed 128!! Only keep what is needed for food,maybe 15 all total, but I enjoy trying different set-ups and since pinks are as easy to catch,I don't spend hours dragging an empty line.