While fishing Lake Michigan, Dennis Stein landed a 33-pound chinook salmon—one twice the size of his personal best and only four pounds shy of the Illinois record—and he did so while fishing solo and not using a net.
“I found myself relating to ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ on many levels,” Stein told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors, referring to Ernest Hemingway’s novel.
With friends unable to accompany him, Stein ventured out alone onto Lake Michigan from North Point Marina near the Wisconsin-Illinois border. But as he was fishing, his boat started taking on water so he decided to head in.
“When I got back and trailered the boat, I pulled the plug and the boat drained for more than half an hour with water pouring like a firehose from the drain plug hole,” he told For the Win Outdoors.
He fixed the leak and decided to test it out to make sure. So he returned to the fishing grounds where he put out three lines and hooked up a few minutes later, around 4:30 in the afternoon.
“It was not a particularly hard strike; I happened to see the rod pop free [from the downrigger] and straighten, then bend downward and the drag start running on a slow buzz,” he said. “I grabbed the rod and slowly pulled back to ensure there was a fish. There was a solid pull and I was sure I had a fish.”
Also on FTW Outdoors: A human-sized bat? It’s big, and photo is real, but…
While fighting the fish, he got bit on a second rod. At one point he put the first rod into a rod holder and attended to the other before putting that back and returning to the first rod. It was a prudent move; the second fish was eventually lost.
Forty minutes into the battle and with his wrists burning, Stein could see the fish 20 feet behind the boat.
“I got him a little closer as I balanced the net where I thought I could get him,” he said. “I tried to see if I could scoop him from the back but noted he could shoot forward at an alarming rate. There was no way to get the net in front of him because I had no strength left to keep the rod up. I decided my best shot was to keep him alongside the boat and get a hand inside his gill.”
So he carefully reached down, touched the fish and discovered it “was too tired to care.”
“I quickly slipped two fingers under his gill plate and with a quick motion I was able to pull him up and over the side,” he explained. “I just sat for 10 minutes unable to move, then I had to unhook the fish, and though he was bigger than my livewell I was able to curl him in.”
For comparison, his previous best was a 16-pounder. Incidentally, the state record for a Chinook salmon is 37 pounds caught by Marge Landeen on Aug. 7, 1976, also in Lake County waters.
With the fish securely in the livewell, Stein checked to make sure he wasn’t taking on water and headed in. Ten minutes later the boat alarm went off. Thinking he was low on oil, he added some. But the alarm kept “chiming.” Turns out, he was low on fuel. He had gone below 10 gallons and set off the alarm.
“This is where my ‘Old Man and the Sea’ reference hit me,” Stein explained. “I was an hour out and I was burning 10 gallons an hour.”
Fortunately, he managed to make it back without running out of fuel, otherwise his fish story would’ve added yet another unwelcome element.
Photo courtesy of Dennis Stein.