Angling for

Angling for great fishing

Hook, line ... Racine, Wis., offers some of the best on Lake Michigan

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter / dhoekstra@suntimes.com

RACINE, Wis. -- The weather started getting rough. And the tiny ship was tossed.

If not for the spirit of Captain Dale Coleman, we wouldn’t have caught three chinook salmon and one coho salmon on a splendid charter fishing trip off the Racine coast.

I put on a floppy Gilligan hat, my best friend played the role of Ginger and we jumped aboard Coleman’s 30-foot Happi Hooker boat at 7 a.m. on recent weekday. With crew member Sam Slaasted, we set sail two miles out into Lake Michigan. There were three-foot swells.

Not so swell for us, but we endured.

Because of the unique ridges along the lake floor where fish feed near Racine’s shoreline, the area is one of the most popular fishing spots on the Great Lakes. Coleman told us we’d find coho salmon and brown trout but that the waves were just too high to venture out farther for lake trout.

Charters here average the largest number of fish caught annually on Lake Michigan. The hook with charters is that they are one-stop shopping. Short-term fishing licenses are sold at the dock, the captain and crew offer advice and they clean, bag and ice the catch on land.

Ginger didn’t feel so good on the choppy waters. I didn’t feel so good watching Slaasted gut and gill our fish. The majority of toxins are in the fish’s belly fat, which the crew also cuts out.

According to the 2006 Lake Michigan LaMP (Lakewide Managment Plan) report, polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are the main contaminants in chinook and coho salmon. PCBs adhere to fat, so stripping the skin and fat, as well as broiling the meat, removes up to 90 percent of the contamination, the report says.

Charter fishing season runs until early October and resumes in late April. Daily charters are available through Fishing Charters of Racine, www.fishracine.com, (800) 475-6113. Trips can be booked for five, eight and 10 hours. Prices average $300 for four people on a five-hour trip; add about $80 an hour for extra hours. Tips are not included.

We iced the fish we caught. Fresh fish can last about three days when stored below 42 degrees. A few days later, at a campground in La Farge, Wis., we grilled one fish using Ginger’s "Lo-Tech Campfire" recipe. She sprinkled salt on both sides of the salmon. She spread half of a bunch of fennel fronds on a big piece of foil, then placed the fish on top, along with the rest of the fronds and sliced onions.

I held the flashlight.

Ginger then sealed up the fish and added another layer of foil, cutting a vent for steam to escape. The fish cooked skin side down on the campfire grill for 15 minutes. It continued to cook after being taken off the grill.

If you don’t want to camp or store the fish for the trip home, the Ivanhoe Pub and Eatery, 231 Main in downtown Racine, (262) 637-4730, will cook your fish. The pub also serves 36 martinis. On the evening before our fishing trip, we ate at the Corner House Supper Club, 1521 Washington, (262) 637-1295, on the recommendation of Chicago chef Michael Altenberg, a former Racine resident. We enjoyed Orange Roughy Almondine ($16.95) and lake perch ($14.95) with a couple of frosty Leinenkugel’s ($4 each).

We caught our fish with hardware consisting of metal spoons, flies and J plugs (plugs that dive into the water as the boat trolls). Slaasted, 15, and his father also make their own flies.

Coleman has been on Lake Michigan for 36 years.

"I saw a 37-pound chinook and a 37 pound lake trout," he said while watching us weave back and forth like knocked-out bowling pins. "That was 20 years ago when the big fish were here. They’re getting smaller."

The lake around Racine is clearer than years past. Zebra mussels are eating algae, which Coleman theorizes removes a food source for the lake’s bait fish.

Slassted cast six lines. Ginger and I just waited until the fish took a bite. If it wasn’t 8 in the morning, we would have been drinking beer. Once there was action on the line, we took over. We learned to keep the fishing rod tip straight up and our knees straight. It certainly was reel life.