DNR decided to run a creel census on the river and they found that there was a significant fishery for the Atlantics; there were a lot of folks chasing them and they were catching a bunch of ‘em.
Anglers often tend to be a closed-mouth group; if they discover a new or different fishery, they’d just as soon keep it to themselves rather than spread the word. They don’t want the competition from other fishermen.
But that secrecy can have negative repercussions. Sometimes a fisheries management program is working, but the fisheries managers don’t know that because they aren’t getting any reports of the results.
Such was the case with the Atlantic salmon stocking program in the Au Sable River in Michigan’s northeastern Lower Peninsula. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources, had been stocking Atlantics below Foote Dam (approximately eight miles upstream from Lake Huron) for a couple of years, but they didn’t hear much about them. There was even some thought that those fish might be better stocked elsewhere where they’d show some return. But the DNR decided to run a creel census on the river and they found that there was a significant fishery for the Atlantics; there were a lot of folks chasing them and they were catching a bunch of ‘em.
So when veteran fishing guide Chris Lessway asked me if I wanted to give them a try, well, do you think he had to twist my arm?
I met up with Lessway on a sunny Indian summer October day for a few-mile float down the winding river and, for a fair while, it seemed like we were wasting our time. I’d thrown a couple of different jerk baits (one a countdown, the other a floater/diver) for two and half hours and retrieved them every way I could. I’d throw one three-quarters upstream and burn it back down, then three-quarters down-stream while reeling just enough to get the slack out of the line and let it swing in the current, the way a fly fisherman does a streamer for steelhead, and then perpendicular to the bank, jerking the heck out of it, like I do when trout fishing, and despite every variation I could think of, I had nothing to show for it.
And then, about the time you get the feeling that what we were doing was just not going to work on this day, wham; on a medium slow, straight, perpendicular-to-the-bank retrieve, the fish came out of no-where in the shallow, ultra-clear water and latched onto my bait. I saw immediately it was what we were looking for (drumroll, please): an Atlantic salmon.
It was not a giant—four, maybe five pounds—but it was picturesque: a hook-jawed male, shiny as a new dime, with dark spots. This is the fish the brain trust at the Department of Natural Resources hopes can help restore the Lake Huron salmon fishery, which had virtually disappeared after the alewife population cratered. And after several years of stocking Atlantics, the strategy appears to be bearing fruit.
Atlantics—some would argue they are the premier sport fish, not only in North America, but in Europe, as well—have succeeded in the St. Marys River for years, thanks to an ideal fish-culture situation: The fish there are in cold water (fed by Lake Superior) and are reared at a hatchery right on the river that they swim into, so they do not have to be collected or transported or anything. They stay in the facility and smolt on their own when they are ready. The St. Marys River Atlantic salmon fishery—about a thousand miles from the Atlantic Ocean—is the best Atlantic salmon in North America this side of New Brunswick.
A jerk bait produced this Au Sable Atlantic salmon.
The DNR found the Atlantics a little more difficult to raise under less than ideal conditions in the Platte River State Fish Hatchery and, for a while, it looked like the project might be a bust. But in 2017 Atlantics started showing up in Lake Huron tributaries in fair numbers and, according to Lessway, who is mostly a fly angler but is not above using gear if the situation calls for it, 2018 was turning out to be even bet-ter, even though we were hitting very early in the run.
After I took a quick photo or two, we released the fish and started looking for another. We switched to fly gear—a little bit of streamer stripping, a little bit of nymphing—but when two hours failed to produce even a bump, Lessway suggested I go back to the Rapala that had fooled the first fish. After a bit, I saw a fish half-heartedly chase the plug. Lessway dropped anchor and I peppered the area with casts. I saw the fish chase again and drift away, and then I saw it a third time, which turned out to charm. I stalled my retrieve, the fish charged the bait and took it halfway down its gullet.
This was a gorgeous fish, a hen that I guessed in the 10-pound category. (“Easily,” Lessway said.) It took some drag from my spinning reel a couple of times, but it had taken the bait so well that it was simply a matter of wearing her down. Lessway netted her up then held her for photos. Beauty, eh?
We went back to the fly gear; I even took a shift on the oars to give Lessway more of a chance to work his personal magic (as he is a much better fly fisherman than I am). But they weren’t buying what he was selling this day.
“One day last week we moved about 15 fish on streamers,” Lessway said. “We caught four. Of course, it was overcast all day. Drizzling. That helped.”
It certainly wasn’t streamer-fishing weather this day: high skies, bright sun, maybe 80 degrees (none of which the weather forecasters had predicted, I might add). That we caught any at all—we talked with two other boats on the river and neither had hooked a salmon—was just testament to clean living, eh?
And we weren’t done at that point, either. After he fished for a while with nothing to show for it, Lessway resumed his position on the oars, I picked up the spinning rod again and, what do you know? I caught another hen, about half the size of the last.
That’s three Atlantics. Guys pay big bucks to go the Labrador to fish for Atlantics and often don’t do anywhere near that well. Of course, they largely fish with fly rods—anybody out there remember read-ing about Ted Williams and his Atlantic salmon exploits in the magazines back in the day?—and, truth be told, I’d have loved nothing better than to get one going on the fly, but I’ve got this shoulder thing that makes it tough to fish a nine-weight rod with a 300-grain sink-tip line for more than an hour or so without reaching for the Advil and, you know, you don’t go fishing to take a beating, now do you? (That’s not the point of it, at any rate.) But it seemed especially nonsensical to keep beating the water to a froth with a fly rod when the Atlantics showed such a willingness to take a plug.
Lessway, who is an excellent fisher-man, said the 2017 the Atlantic salmon run just got better as the season progressed. “The first two weeks of November were lights out last year,” he said. He said the best is yet to come and, truth be told, last year it only got better up until late winter and early spring. I know of one angler—who alternated between fly fishing and using spawn—who caught 13 in few days in March—and said he lost easily that many, too.
Despite the problems Atlantic pose for the hatcheries, the MDNR appears committed to the program. They’ve begun rearing them at a second hatchery with an eye toward increased production.
Atlantic salmon appear to be more like steelhead than Pacific salmon. They’ll stay in the river all winter and then go back out in the lake as the water warms up in the spring.
“There’s not a guaranteed death like Pacific salmon,” explained Tim Cwalinski, a senior fisheries biologist with the MDNR in the northeast Lower Peninsula. “One thing we’ve learned about Atlantics is that they will go through the motions of spawning in the fall (natural reproduction has not been documented in the Au Sable River as of yet, though it has in the St. Marys). But they don’t just turn around and hightail it for Lake Huron. They actually stay in the river through the winter. I know people who fish there and catch fish all winter – these fish are being caught in January, February, March and April.”
Cwalinksi said Atlantics typically run upriver as three-year-olds, but plenty of two-year-olds (like skipper steelhead) show up as well. “The two-year-olds are running around 20 to 24 inches,” Cwalinksi said.
“The three-year-olds are 25 to 30 inches. And the biggest fish we’re seeing are in the low 30-inches range. They’re plump.”
Cwalinski says the Atlantics do not appear to be long-lived critters. “They appear to only live about five years, based on coded-wire tag data,” he said. “Last year I saw one five-year-old—that is the maximum we’re seeing right now.”
Although the Atlantic salmon program is showing great promise in Au Sable River, it has its share of problems as well. Atlantics are notoriously hard to raise in the hatchery (outside of the St. Mary River facility at Lake Superior State University). One of the issues is the water at the DNR’s hatcheries is warmer than Lake Superior water, so the fish mature more quickly and are ready to smolt at a smaller size than those at the St. Marys. And larger smolts have better survival than smaller smolts.
“They’re probably the hardest fish to raise,” Cwalinski said. “I’ve heard it said that if you look at them wrong they’ll die; if you give them excuse to die, they’ll take it. With the warmer water they want to smolt too quickly. So having a raceway full of Atlantics is like having 50 kids in your house and they’re all teenagers. You want to get them out of there, but if you kick them out too quickly, they’re not ready for the world.
“We know there’s a pretty high mortality of those smolts,” Cwalinski continued. “How could there not be with all the friggin’ walleye in that system? But we know the ones that do make it through do come back. They go out in the lake and they can mature anywhere in the lake, but when it comes time to come back to the river, they do. They have a strong homing instinct.”
Despite the problems Atlantic pose for the hatcheries, the MDNR appears commit-ted to the program. They’ve begun rearing them at a second hatchery with an eye toward increased production.
Atlantics will never be Pacifics. We won’t have to worry about them eating themselves out of house and home because there will never be that many of them. But if the NDR can produce enough of them to keep the Au Sable fishery going, it’ll be a feather in its cap—and another opportunity for Great Lake anglers.
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