Fishtales

The Storm
James Hert

The Great Lakes can be unpredictable and dangerous. They should always be approached with a great deal of respect. Even when taking all of the normal precautions, you can still run into trouble. I remember one such morning on Lake Michigan several years ago.

My best friend, Fred, and I wanted to take advantage of some early spring fishing outside the pier heads at St. Joseph, Michigan. Fred and I have fished a lot of places and have had some pretty good adventures together. This morning, things got a little more adventurous than we had bargained for, but if you ever want to get into a mess during an adventure, Fred is a good person to have along with you.

St. Joseph is where the St. Joseph River runs into Lake Michigan, and every spring, the salmon, lake trout, brown trout, and steelhead come into the shallow water. The river water is warmer than that of the lake and the game fish feast on the baitfish that also head shallow looking for warmer water. At this time of year, if you are lucky and get into the fish, you can literally load the boat, but don't let the game warden catch you. We were fishing for fun so we would let most of the fish go. It is nice to keep a couple of the small coho salmon, though, because they are some of the best eating salmon, one will ever taste.

When I say shallow, I mean shallow. Sometimes the fish are right up in the top foot or two of water, just a stones throw from shore. Planner boards are a must! On the Great Lakes, you really can't use those small inline planner boards. Big ski boards and mast that get the towline up above the wave tops are the only way to go. Fred owned the boat, and I owned the ski mast and planners. Weird, you might say? Not really if you knew Fred and me.

When we started fishing together around 1986, I did not own a boat and fished mostly from shore or rented a boat when I could. I was thirty one then, and it is hard when you are trying to raise a family and get your career off the ground. But Fred was a few years older and was a little farther along financially. So he bought a boat, real nice seventeen-foot Sea Nymph, the Fishing Machine model. It had a deep-vee hull and a raised fishing platform in the bow, right-hand console with a bench seat wide enough for two people, and chair fishing seats in both the bow and the middle of the stern. It had a forty five horse Johnson motor that trolled real nice, too.

However, shortly after he bought the boat I said, "Fred, We really need a mast and planner skis if we are going to fish Lake Michigan for salmon."

"How much are they?"

"About $180.00."

"Like hell we do! I'm not spending $180.00 on planner boards. I just spent several thousand for the boat so you could go fishing! We'll get some of those inexpensive Yellow Birds."

Needless to say I bought the planner boards and mast-when it comes to fishing I want to do it right, and have to have the latest and greatest equipment. Fred and my wife think it's a bit excessive, but I don't understand what gives them that idea.

Fred and I make good fishing partners because I like to be in control and he doesn't mind going along. Fortunately, he is a good sport. Now I am, and always have been, a fishing fanatic. Fred likes to go but needs someone to egg him on a bit. Don't get me wrong, he loves to fish too, but I have to be the one to instigate. I would call him during the week and say, "Fred, pick me up Saturday morning at 4:30, we're going salmon fishing."

"Sure, great idea. But I'm not getting up at 3:30 in the morning to be at your house at 4:30! I wouldn't get up at 3:30 even if I liked you! I will be at your house at 6:00."

" I guess that'll be okay," I would say. Six is when I wanted to go anyway, but if I'd said six he would say seven!

So on this particular Saturday morning in early May, he picked me up an hour before dawn, and we headed to St. Joe. We launched the boat at a public launch facility in the river not too far from the lake. If you have ever headed out of the piers of a major river at the first light of day into one of the great lakes, you'd know it is something you never tire of. In a previous life, I think I must have been a sailor of some type. I absolutely love the water and think daybreak is the best time of day to be on it. I would usually make a comment like that as we headed out of the piers, and Fred would say, "Yes, it's beautiful. Now hand me the coffee." Fred is not a morning person until he has had his second cup of coffee, but you can tell by looking at him that he loves it, too. He gave me a kind of sideways wink like he does some times and gunned the throttle just a bit. We were anxious to start fishing.

This morning on Lake Michigan was one of those unusually calm, rosy dawn mornings that a fisherman lives for. Although when I see red skies in the morning, I always remember the sailor's creed, "Red at night, sailors delight, red in the morning, sailors take warning."

"Jim, this really and truly is a beautiful morning." Fred said. "That red sky might mean something, though!"

"I know."

There were quite a few boats out, but it was not terribly crowed. Because our boat was somewhat small for Lake Michigan, we always fished within a mile or so from shore. A storm can blow up at any time on the Great Lakes, and if you don't have a twenty five-foot boat, you should not venture too far from the pier heads, and even then, unless you have a huge ship, you need to watch the weather and be real careful. We knew that and thought we were being careful, so we put the planner boards out just as soon as we cleared the pier heads and found a nice big opening between the other boats.

We were of course immediately faced with one of those big decisions you really agonize over! Do we troll north or south from the pier heads? With Fred and me, you know without question we will want to go in the opposite direction. If he says north, I'll say south, or vice versa. Somehow we agreed on south-one of us must have given in.

Typically, we would troll north or south from the piers for a mile or two and then turn around and head back the other way and go past the piers just as far in the other direction. If you caught more than one fish in an area or saw a lot of fish on the graph, then you would troll in a circle in that area for a while. We had four rods out, two on each side of the boat, because that is all the Michigan law allows. We could have fished three off each side and two straight off the back, had the law permitted it. On this particular morning, we caught a decent brown trout right off the bat a hundred yards off the pier. These spring browns are so fat from the baitfish they are literally shaped like a football! If you don't believe me, ask other people who fish the Great Lakes for brown trout. When we were about a quarter of a mile from the pier, I had an idea. "Hey, Fred, the fish may be packed in close to the river mouth this morning. Maybe we should troll back and forth across the mouth of the piers?"

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Besides, do you see those cat paws forming on the water?" Fred was very observant and usually picked up on slight changes in weather conditions before most people did.

"Yeah, the breeze is coming up pretty quick this morning! I don't see any clouds but let's make a big wide turn toward the pier."

"Okay, I'll turn us, and you watch that inside board and make sure we don't turn too tight."

That decision may have saved our lives that morning. At least it saved us from having to run Fred's boat up on the beach.

We trolled back past the mouth of the pier and again were no more than a quarter of a mile past the pier when I noticed the wind was picking up even more. I could now see clouds on the horizon.

"Fred, do you see those clouds?" I said in an ominous tone.

"Yes, what do you think? I don't want to be caught out here in a storm!" he exclaimed.

"Me neither. It'll probably be an hour or two before that gets here, but let's stay right in this area close to the pier where we can dart in quickly if we have to."

The lake is over a hundred miles across, but the curvature of the earth only allows you to see roughly twenty-one miles. Many times I had seen clouds on the horizon that either took hours to get to you on never got to you at all.

So we turned around and were once again heading back toward the piers. In disbelief, I watched the one-foot chop turn into two-foot waves and start white capping in a matter of seconds! I could tell by the look on Fred's face that he was seeing and feeling the same thing I was. There was now a very stiff wind blowing in our faces as we looked toward the clouds on the horizon. Fred took charge.

"Jim, reel in those lines and planner boards. We're getting out of here!" he yelled.

As I was handing him his life jacket, I was putting mine on. We always had them on when we were under power but would usually take them off when we were just trolling on calm water. Neither of us had to even think about whether we needed them right at this moment.

"Maybe you better put it in neutral and reel too, Fred. Look at that!" I said pointing out toward the lake.

I had just noticed that every single boat which had launched out of St. Joseph that morning was coming back into port. You could also tell that they were not taking their time. It looked to me like things were developing into a panic situation. I didn't yet know what kind of problems we faced, but at thirty-one, I knew that it was not a good idea to panic in any situation.

By now, the boat was rocking quite a bit because we were parallel to the waves. It is hard enough to stand in a boat that is rocking back and forth like ours was, let alone trying to reel the lines in quickly. By this time, the wind was blowing spray off the tops of the white caps, and to be quite honest, I was scared! We had both reeled in two rods and had just thrown them onto the floor of the boat. This was no time to worry about being neat or losing a rod and reel. We needed to worry about things more important than rods and reels.

"Jim, get those planner boards in here if you can. I am taking us to the pier right now!" Fred said with just a touch of panic in his voice.

"Just go! Don't worry about the planner boards!" I tried to yell over my shoulder, but I could tell the wind just blew my words away and Fred probably never heard any of it as he drove the boat. I did somehow manage to get the planner boards in while kneeling on the deck. I held the mast with one hand and reeled with the other as hard as I could. Fred is experienced and capable behind the wheel of a boat, so I wasn't too concerned once we were under power and headed for the piers.

We were close enough that it took only a few minutes to get there. With just the right touch on the throttle, Fred was able to keep the boat in the troughs between the waves so that we could make good time. We were thinking that as soon as we got inside the pier heads, our problems would be over.

There were several boats, maybe even a hundred or so, getting back to the piers at about the same time we did. Most were more typical Lake Michigan worthy crafts of twenty five to thirty feet, and since they were in a hurry, they were throwing up some pretty big wakes. There is supposed to be a slow, no-wake zone inside the piers, but I think most of those guys were more worried about saving their skin and their boats than about the no-wake zone. What they probably didn't fully realize at the time is that not everybody coming into the piers had boats as big as theirs. Some were still throwing up three to four foot rollers as they slowed down at the mouth of the pier.

We also had the trick of getting in line. We had been heading perpendicular to the piers coming in from the north. Most of the other boats were coming in from out in the lake farther to the West and headed strait in. We had to time a left-hand turn behind a boat where there was enough room, and in front of the next boat. With the waves and chop at the mouth of the piers, you could not stop and wait for someone to politely invite you in! If you weren't moving, you were in danger of capsizing. Fred and I both spotted a gap we thought would work. I pointed at it, and he headed for it immediately.

There were two boats coming in with enough room for us to go between them without making the one in back slow down. Once we got through the gap, there was a pretty good size opening before you got to the next line of boats. That gap gave us room to make the turn to head inside the piers.

We got between the two boats okay and I quickly glanced at the face of the captain of the boat we were passing. He was nodding as if to say, "Go ahead and go through, I won't run over you."

We had to climb up over the roller of the boat we followed, and as soon as we got up over it and down into a relatively flat trough, Fred deftly started his turn left. Everything was going fine, but as we completed the turn, the thing that neither of us had seen coming happened.

The big rollers from the boat on our left and the one on our right came together and collided over the top of our bow just as we were going down into the trough of a wave that had come from behind us. I hope it is the only time in my life I ever see the bow of my boat go completely under water about a foot and stay there for several seconds. From where I sat in the center of the boat, it looked to me like the bow was going to be trapped under the water. I had visions of the boat going slowly to the bottom, never to come back up again. With all of the boats coming behind us, I figured our odds of not getting run over were not real good. It was a true "Oh, sh**!" moment! Pardon my language, but no one says, "Oh, shoot!" at time like that. Actually I don't remember what, if anything, either of us said. I think we were too scared and shocked to say much of anything.

Evidently someone was watching after us that day because the bow of the boat came up out of that mess. Fred gunned it just a tad and we kept going even though we had taken on quite a bit of water. Had we had a camcorder, we could have made a TV commercial for the sea worthiness of a Sea Nymph.

Fred turned his bilge pump on, and we kept a close eye on other rollers, and made sure the same thing did not happen again. But there was a lot of bad criss-crossing chop in between those piers, and a couple more times, it looked like the same thing would happen to us, but somehow, Fred avoided them. I turned, looked him in the eye, and said, "Fred, I'm glad you were driving this blasted boat today!" He held eye contact for a second and just nodded. He knew I meant more than that. Neither of us could say what we were really thinking.

When a lot of boats are in a narrow confinement like that, their wakes bounce off the piers and come back. The waves bouncing back from the piers hit the ones heading toward the piers. As you can imagine, this creates a real choppy situation, something like a washing machine. It is not easy driving a boat in a washing machine.

It was white-knuckle time all the way through the piers until we got back to where the river widened out. I bet only fifteen to twenty minutes passed since we first realized we had to reel in and get off the lake, but it seemed like an eternity. We may not have been in danger of loosing our lives, but it was a scarier experience than I care to have on a daily basis. If we had capsized or turned over, I am pretty sure the first boat coming up behind us would have stopped and pulled us out of the water, and we were wearing our life jackets. But then again you never know.

Fred and I have relived that experience many times, wondering if we had somehow been stupid or foolish, or done anything wrong. Having had the experience, I can tell you that if I were ever again in a similar situation, we would go inside the piers sooner, and wouldn't wait for the big boats. Waiting till more or less the last minute with a smaller boat was probably a mistake, but that storm came up so fast! We had never seen a bunch of larger boats trying to get inside the piers, all at the same time. Obviously, it was not a good time for a small boat to be there.

One might say you should never go on Lake Michigan in a seventeen-foot boat, but I have seen many that size or smaller many times. In the summer, during perch season, you can count literally hundreds of smaller boats on the lake. The storm didn't actually hit until after we had the boat on the trailer and we were in the truck pulling away from the launch, but the pre-storm waves had been something!

It was only about 9:00 A.M. when we came off the lake. We had breakfast, hoping the storm would blow over and we could go back out and fish some more. After breakfast, we drove to a bluff where we could see out on the lake, and even though the storm had passed, the wind was still up and there were still some pretty big waves.

Then I saw something I couldn't believe. A boat that looked to be about a twenty three footer was just coming up to the piers. He was rocking and rolling pretty good. We watched him all the way inside the piers and figured he had cut it too close.

Instead of running in with the other boats, he had to ride the storm out with his bow pointed into the wind. Then when the storm let up a little, he made a run for it. I've never had to do that, and hope I never do. I bet if we were scared, he had to have been terrified. You just can't be too careful on these big bodies of water.

You know, writing this story makes me want to call Fred and say, "Hey pick me up Saturday morning at 4:30. We're going salmon fishing!"

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