Recently, my stepson, Lance Ross sent us an interesting article from the town of Ludington, Michigan. In case you have never heard of that town, it is the largest city and county seat of Mason County in Michigan. With a population of about 8,000 it is a harbor town located on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Pere Marquette River.
The local newspaper, The Ludington Daily News, reported that 19-year old Luis Martinez, from Ortonville, Michigan, caught a 47.86 lbs, 47.5 inch Chinook (King) Salmon. The article stated that Martinez had never fished for salmon before and had just purchased a fishing license on Friday, August 6. By the end of the following day, he was celebrating having caught a Michigan record for Chinook Salmon.
While fishing on Lake Michigan with Icebreaker Charters, Martinez landed the behemoth that broke the state record which had stood for 43 years, as reported by the newspaper and local TV station WLNS. The old record was 46.06 lbs and 43.5 inches caught in 1978 in the Grand River in Kent County.
“I honestly fell asleep the whole way until my mom said, ‘You’re up,’ and I was like, what?” Martinez explained to WLNS. “They handed me the fishing pole and I started reeling the thing in.” It took about 30 minutes to land.
“The first 10 minutes were tiring, my arms were sore, (and) I was ready to give up, but my mom was yelling, ‘Don’t give up, keep reeling it in,’” Martinez told WLNS. “The fish started to jump out of the water, you could see it and they were like so excited because it was huge. I was like, it’s just a fish, there’s nothing special about it, at least that’s what I thought.”
Capt. Bobby Sullivan recognized the potential of the catch immediately. “When it hit the (boat) floor, I said, ‘This thing is big,’” Sullivan told the Ludington Daily News. “And then I started second-guessing myself. I thought it was pushing 40 [lbs]. I told him, ‘You don’t realize what you just caught.’”
Using a Moonshine raspberry carbon spoon lure, the catch was made at 7:30 a.m. They continued fishing a while longer, catching one more salmon.
“The whole time I’m thinking, ‘I wish I had a scale. I wish I had a scale,” Sullivan told the Ludington Daily News.
They eventually headed to Ray’s Auto Marine where the fish weighed more than 47 pounds on a scale that wasn’t certified, prompting a desire to get an official weight. That came at Northside Market, where the certified scale read 47.86 lbs. Later in the day, Jay Wesley, the Lake Michigan Basin Coordinator for the Department of Natural Resources, certified the catch as a state record.
“Unbelievable to have 47 pounds,” Wesley told the Daily News. “In fact, the last state record was in 1978, and it was snagged in the Grand River. To have this one to officially bite a lure, caught out in Lake Michigan and caught in the Salmon Capital of Michigan, Ludington, is pretty amazing.”
Martinez, who was fishing with his mother, sister and stepfather, told the TV station it was like winning the lottery in the fishing sense. He added, “I will go back [salmon fishing again], but I will never beat this fish. Everything is downhill from now on.”
Many thanks to Lance, for sending that interesting article on to us.
Incidentally, quite a few Berkshire anglers fish for King Salmon in Lake Ontario, NY. Yes, they can catch large ones there, too, with the official record for the largest salmon caught there weighing 47.13 lbs.
According to Wikipedia, Chinook Salmon are the largest Pacific salmon species and, on average, grow to be three feet long and approximately 30 pounds; however, some of them can reach more than five feet long and 110 pounds. The largest known size of a Chinook Salmon is 126 pounds measuring 4 feet 10 inches long which was caught in a fish trap near Petersburg, Alaska in 1949. An angler also caught a 97-pounder in the Kenai River in 1986.
Huge King Salmon are caught annually by flyfishermen out of the Salmon River, a tributary to Lake Ontario in Pulaski, NY. Local flyfishers such as Ron Wojcik, Bill Travis, Dick Bordeau, and others haul in some very large ones every year.
BNRC “Trails-From-Towns” Takes Next Step in Great Barrington
Congratulations to the Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC) for receiving a $28,000 grant from MassTrails, an inter-agency initiative of the Commonwealth led by the Governor’s Office, in collaboration with the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
The grant will be used to expand trail options at BNRC’s Thomas & Palmer Brook conservation reserve, and to advance plans to connect Great Barrington’s downtown center by footpath to Thomas & Palmer Brook and other conserved lands heading north toward Stockbridge. The work proposed for this next phase will include the construction of a new woodland hiking trail connecting the popular accessible loop at Thomas & Palmer to the upland forest, and natural features within it.
BNRC President Jenny Hansell travelled to Cape Cod in July to participate in the MassTrails award ceremony. At the ceremony, Governor Charlie Baker announced nearly $4 million in grant funding to support 52 trail projects across the Commonwealth.
Upcoming DCR Forest Management Projects
The Department of Conservation and Recreation’s (DCR) Bureau of Forestry will be hosting two virtual public meetings to discuss forest management projects in Chester-Blandford, Mount Washington, Northfield, Otter River, Lawton, and Myles Standish State Forests.
During the virtual meetings, slides describing each proposed forest management project will be presented by DCR foresters. Questions on specific projects may be posed through the written Q&A function during
the respective presentations. On Tuesday, August 17, 2021, from 4:00 to 5:30 pm, three nearby projects will be discussed:
A project within Chester-Blandford State Forest (Hampden County) proposes to use uneven age and even age management in both mixed hardwood stands and Norway spruce plantations to
regenerate native species.
A project within Mt. Washington State Forest (Berkshire County) proposes to use a combination of uneven- and even-age management systems to salvage and reduce ash density, and even-aged management in larch plantations to regenerate native species.
A project in Northfield State Forest (Franklin County) proposes to use uneven-age management techniques to create better growing conditions for residual trees using a variable density thinning. Additionally, a collaborative research project with UMass Amherst is proposed here to study interactions between vegetative diversity, forest management and forest carbon dynamics.
The meeting for the other three projects, which are located in Worcester and Plymouth Counties will take place on Thursday August 19 from 4:00 to 5:30pm.
Participants should check with DCR’s Bureau of Forestry with instructions on how to join the meetings.
The proposals may also be viewed at the website address: https://www.mass.gov/guides/forest-management-projects#-forest-management-projects-proposed-2021. The public comment period, originally scheduled to end on August 14, has be extended until August 31 to ensure all participants are allowed the time for comment after listening to the presentations.
After the meetings, the presentations will be available for viewing at https://www.mass.gov/dcr/past-public-meetings. DCR encourages the public to share additional feedback on its website. Comments may be submitted online at Forestry.comments@mass.gov. Please note that the content of comments you submit to DCR, along with your name, town, and zip code, will be posted on DCRs website if provided.
Additional contact information when commenting, notably email addresses, will only be used for outreach on future updates on the subject project or property.
If you have agency-related questions or concerns or would like to be added to an email list to receive DCR general or project-specific announcements, email Mass.Parks@mass.gov or call 617-626-4973.