SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. -- Andrew Gale has caught a lot of fish in a lot of places, including a 200-pound striped marlin off Mexico that he fought for four hours in tropical heat.
After four hours of catching and releasing 60 pink salmon on a fly rod in the St. Marys River rapids, the Naperville, Ill., angler said, "This is almost as tiring. You don't have the heat to contend with, but my arms are starting to ache."
My original plan was to head for the Pere Marquette or Muskegon Rivers for another round against big chinook salmon that began coming in from Lake Michigan about two weeks before. But friends who fish those rivers regularly said the initial run dissipated quickly. However, trolling anglers were still catching a lot of salmon just off the river mouths and another push of chinooks was expected soon, especially with rain in the forecast.
When it comes to fishing, you need to be flexible. So I modified my plans and headed north from Grayling, Mich., to the wide St. Marys. This river separates Michigan from Ontario and gets pretty predictable runs of 4 1/2 species of Pacific salmon out of Lake Huron from mid-September until it gets too cold to stand in the water.
First in are the pinks, and though they were a couple of weeks later than usual this year, there were absolute hordes of them.
Pink salmon run every other year in their natal streams in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. The pinks introduced accidentally to Lake Superior in the 1950s spawn in the St. Marys every year, with the even-year runs bigger than the odd.
"This year we're seeing a huge run," said John Giuliani, a Canadian fishing guide who keeps tabs on the salmon in the St. Marys and nearby rivers. "They're smaller than last year. The females are averaging 2-3 pounds and the males 3-4, but there are plenty of them."
Female pinks look a lot like a small chinook or rainbow trout, especially silver fish that have just come in. But the males are unmistakable once they morph into the "humpy" mode, developing hooked jaws and hunchbacks.
Gale and his dad, another Andrew from Muncie, Ind., had fished the day before on the Garden River about an hour north of Sault Ste. Marie, and the pinks were so thick "you about had to kick them out of the way to get into the water," the senior Gale said. "I had never seen anything like it."
I've also experienced that kind of pink fishing on the Garden, but what a difference a day made. We still saw fish, but it rained heavily overnight, and that morning the water had risen 18 inches and was stained, and the fish were scattered and spooky.
"Thank God for the St. Marys," Giuliani said as we headed back to that huge river, whose fluctuations are controlled not by the weather but by massive gates that control the amount of water released from Lake Superior.
On the Garden, fishing water 1-3 feet deep, the Gales had been picking out individual fish and casting to them.
Fishing the deeper runs on the St. Marys, mostly 4-6 feet deep, they weren't able to spot fish until Giuliani said, "See that big dark blob out there? That's all pink salmon. Just cast upstream, do a big upstream mend in the line and let the flies drift down to them."
Young Andy, fly fishing for only the second time, used an 8-weight rod that's easier to cast, especially with the float-and-flies combination most effective in the St. Marys. His father used a 6-weight, which I also like to use for pinks.
The fly setup, which can be cast just as easily with a spinning rod, uses a small float about 6 feet above an egg-sucking leech or woolly bugger streamer, which might be any color from pink to black. Tied to the bend of the streamer with about 18 inches of line is a smaller caddis fly in natural colors or egg fly.
"You have to experiment with the colors until you find what they want," Giuliani said. "A few days ago they were taking a leech with a lot of red in it. Yesterday, they wouldn't touch anything red."
As the Gales drifted their flies through the fast runs, five times out of six the float would dip or stop. When they lifted the rod, the tip would bend hard as a pink salmon fought furiously to get rid of the lure.
New to fly fishing, young Andy needed a few minutes to figure out that you don't try to cross the eyes of these fish on the hook set, as you would a bass or walleye, but once he got the feel it was "almost a fish on every cast. The take can be pretty subtle, but you learn how to recognize it and react."
What we didn't catch was the pinook, a hybrid between a pink and chinook that apparently occurs naturally only in the St. Marys system.
It's my favorite salmon on a fly rod, because it can reach 10-12 pounds like a chinook retaining the maniacal aggressiveness and leaping ability of the pink.
Hey, I guess that means I'll have to make another trip.
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