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Adam Thompson column: Old lure still has lots of luck
It's a fish tale that's true, touching, spans three generations of a family and was told Sunday near the conclusion of the 36th annual Coho Derby. Gary Markus has a lure that he, for lack of a better term, inherited from his father, Bill Sr. Old and steeped in tradition, the lure doesn't get much use for fear that it could wind up a casualty of a broken line. But this lure has, in the past, proven to be magic for the Markus family and it was again Sunday. It was 14 years ago that Bill Markus used the lucky lure to catch the second-largest rainbow trout at the 22nd Coho Derby. Last year, Gary's son, Grant Markus, won the rainbow division of the Cleveland Fishing Derby at Hika Bay. Earlier this summer, Gary's other son and Grant's brother, Scott, hooked the first-place rainbow at Hika Bay.
Lampreys put a bite on lake trout
Lake trout, once the dominant predator on Lake Michigan, are so rare these days that salmon have replaced them as the fish of choice whenever a backyard boil is in order. While most longtime big-lake anglers admit today's salmon and steelhead are far more fun to catch, high-fat lake trout have a one-of-a-kind taste after being boiled with potatoes, salt and onions and smothered in melted butter. "They're a little better tasting, a little more moist," said Denny VanDenBerg of Kewaunee, who has been boiling fish for almost 50 years. "They might fight like a log, but then again, so do walleyes." Brian Frerk of Green Bay gives away almost all of the salmon and trout he catches while fishing with his 6-year-old son, Josh. He may not fully understand, then, the love affair with lake trout by those who grew up with them when they were the only game in town in the 1960s or who targeted them in spring or whenever nothing else would bite on slow days from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Sewage plant mishap kills trout in Dog River
A chemical release by a municipal sewage plant is being blamed for killing a significant number of fish last week on one of Vermont's premier wild trout streams.
Fish were killed on more than a half-mile stretch of the Dog River below the Northfield sewage treatment plant. An angler alerted state fisheries biologist of dead fish Monday afternoon.
According to Northfield Village Manager Charles Morse, an infusion of chlorine was accidentally leaked into the Dog River from the sewage treatment plant as work was being done to upgrade the facility's chlorinating system.
"We knew we released chlorine, but we didn't detect a problem until later on," Morse said. "We're upset that we killed fish, obviously; we try to be as environmentally conscious as we can be."
Morse said the spill affected a stretch of river about 0.6 of a mile long, from below the sewage plant to the mouth of Cox Brook, a major tributary of the Dog.
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