The First Fish

I slid my kayak from the sandy beach into the calm water of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan’s western shore. As I paddled, I looked across the blue water to Whitefish Bay Point, where cedar trees line the dark-gray limestone shore. The bay was quiet now, but at the height of the season, the waters around the point would be dotted with dozens of charter boats bristling with fishing rods, outriggers and down-riggers.
I’d been trolling out on this bay from a small motorboat since I was a child. Not long after becoming a kayaker a few years ago, the idea of trying to catch a salmon while sitting on the water got stuck in my imagination. In all the summers I’d been here, I’d never heard of anyone around Door County fishing from a kayak.
My plan was to make a few practice runs, weeks before the fish were in, so I decided I wouldn’t even bother to get up early, but instead just fish in the middle of the day when fish rarely bite. I didn’t expect to catch anything this trip, but it would give me a chance to get used to handling fishing gear from my kayak.
In the middle of the bay, I turned south in front of the old wooden dock and cast out my line. I tucked the butt of the rod into the waist strap of my spray skirt and paddled farther south trailing the line. The rod ran up my chest, bending over my shoulder, as I towed the lure behind. This way I’d be able feel a fish strike. I’ve never used rod holders because I love feeling a fish hit on the line—that sudden jolt from under the water is what makes fishing magic to me.
I had searched for “kayak fishing” on the Internet. I wanted to know what equipment to use if there isn’t room for a lot of big gear, and I wanted tips for balancing in a kayak with a fish on the line, or if it was even wise or possible to catch a big salmon from a sea kayak! The only information I found was about sit-on-top kayaks. They had room for huge nets, and they looked extremely stable. Sit-on-top fishers were using serious gear, and the kayak looked to be an accessory to the fishing rod, rather then the other way around. I wanted to fish without giving up the things I liked about my kayak. In a closed-cockpit sea kayak, I was, for the most part, winging it.
The day before, I’d bought a small $23 rod-and-reel from a shop in Sturgeon Bay. They had some big salmon rods with long butts, but this small one seemed more manageable in close quarters. I thought a larger rod would be clumsy and awkward to hold onto.
I trolled about 30 yards from the shoreline, using a silver “crocodile” spoon. I could see 15 feet down through the shades of hazy green water, to where the rock shelf dropped off into the darkness. I had fished here dozens of years ago, before I was a teenager, and I remembered the trout and little salmon I caught that had been hiding under that shelf.
I looked for the silver flash of fish lying along the brown rocks. Suddenly, the rod tugged lightly against my life jacket. Startled, I jumped in my skin. The line went slack. I laughed. The pull was so light that it could only have been a small trout or salmon, maybe a pound at best, but I had jumped as if it had been a marlin. I stopped paddling. The line dropped loosely down from the tip of the rod to the water. Whatever had struck the lure, I thought, got off, or I had just snagged the bottom rocks for a moment.