Trolling turns into Superior experience

By SAM COOK
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
ON LAKE SUPERIOR, Minn. -- The 28-foot Grady-White bobs and rocks on the southeasterly chop. One of two Yamaha 225-horsepower outboards purrs, pushing the boat across Lake Superior at 2.2 mph. Just right for trolling a dozen spoons and minnow imitations through various depths of 53-degree water.
The boat, dubbed the Kelsi K, belongs to Duluth ad man Howard Klatzky, but his 28-year-old son, Andy, thinks he owns it, Howard says.
"I'll be someplace like the Pickwick and someone will say, 'Yeah, Andy was telling us about his boat,"' the elder Klatzky says.
He says it to chide Andy, but he has to like the way his son handles the boat and the way he has learned the trolling game on Lake Superior.
"When I first started this, he was 13 or 14," Howard said. "I couldn't get him out here. Now I can't keep him off of it."
Staying busy
Andy is too busy putting out lines to respond. A couple on Dipsy Divers, running midway in the water column. A couple on downriggers at 50 feet, each with a second "slider" line riding somewhere between 25 and 30 feet. Then the six surface lines held away from the boat with trolling boards.
The lines go out with an efficiency borne of experience. Andy plucks a lure from the bucket of cleansing soap, globs on a dollop of Marilyn's Magical Fish Attractor, then puts the lure to work.
Duluth's Jerry Brown and I try to stay out of the way, part of a four-man do-si-do on the stern deck of the Grady-White.
We've run nine miles out from the Duluth ship canal on this Sunday in early June, and we have company. Eleven other boats are within a half-mile, each carving its own wide swath through the lake, trailing a similar number of fishing lines.
The fishing is a concern. After a string of good fishing, the past few days have been tough, Andy and Howard say. Even the charter captains have been having trouble finding fish. But, as always when you're fishing, today could be the day.
Settling in
We settle back onto cushions or boat chairs and await the day's action. It will not be hard duty. Classic rock wafts from satellite radio speakers fore and aft. Sun slants down from a nearly cloudless sky. Brown already has circulated glazed and powdered doughnut holes. There's cold pop in the coolers, chips and sandwiches in the cabin.
Andy became serious about trolling Lake Superior about three years ago. It can be daunting learning the lake, its fish movements, the myriad lure presentations. But he has had help.
"I learned most of it from the charter captain next to us," Andy says.
He's talking about charter fishing captain Randol Lamere of A Lucky Star Charters, who keeps his boat in the next slip at Lakehead Boat Basin. With Lamere's help, and that of other trollers, Andy is learning how to put fish in the boat.
"I knew he was getting serious when he started learning the names [of the lures]," his dad says.
It's one thing to know whether you're using a Bomber stickbait or a Flashback spoon. It's another to know whether the pattern you're using is a Tammy Fay, a Bloody Nose, a Monkey Puke Dots, a Slum Lord or a Yellow Clown.
Some action
An hour into the morning, a downrigger line snaps free from its release, and Brown grabs it. He plays it while the boat plows forward so the remaining lines don't tangle. Howard mans the net, and soon he's swinging a 4-pound lake trout aboard. The fish sports a faded scar on its side, indicating a lamprey was attached to it at some point in the past.
The fish has taken a Caramel Dolphin Flashback spoon on the slider line, somewhere between 25 and 30 feet down. It goes in the cooler to be filleted later. The lure is washed, Marilyned and tossed back into the lake.
We resume our positions, sitting in the sun, shooting the breeze. On the satellite radio, Queen blares "Fat-Bottomed Girls." Sandwiches and pretzels are passed. We sip on soft drinks. When Ernest Hemingway wrote "A Moveable Feast," he might have been describing a day of trolling on Lake Superior.
Time is a relative commodity out here. Minutes seem to evaporate. Hours vanish. The sun describes its arc across the sky, riding over the tips of our rods. The rod tips twitch and flex in concert with the waves. They appear to be the appendages of some graphite praying mantis.
Andy is on the cell phone at regular intervals, comparing notes with other anglers. Not much happening. A fish here. A fish there.
Bob Seger checks in by satellite radio with "Runnin' Against the Wind." U2 offers up "Angel of Harlem." Steve Winwood delivers "Roll With It, Baby."
Over the music, we tell stories of other days and other trips. Peacock bass. Tarpon. Alaskan steelhead. Arctic char. South Dakota pheasants. Brown bears. North Dakota geese.
Sure, we would rather be catching fish. But sharing stories with people who have traveled widely is not a hardship.
Meanwhile, we're looking up at the Duluth hillside, a soft Cheng-Kee Chee painting, saturated with blues and greens, punctuated with a lift bridge and the semi-tall buildings of downtown.
Another lake trout comes aboard, courtesy of a Challenger minnow imitation on a surface line. He's maybe 3 pounds. We'll take him.
We miss another fish on a downrigger line. He felt good for about seven seconds.
At the appointed hour, Howard and Andy pull lines. Andy fires up the second Yamaha 225. The boat climbs onto plane and soon is skimming toward the ship canal at 33 mph.