I went salmon fishing yesterday afternoon and this morning in Winthrop Harbor Illinois. We had a group of six guys that went. It was Gary, his father Gale, his college roommate Mike, my dad, my uncle Carl, and me. Gale is from Rushville IL, Mike is from outside of Springfield, IL. Gary is from Minneapolis, and My dad and Carl are from Western Wisconsin, so we had quite a geographical representation on the boat.
We got on the boat Thursday afternoon around 1:00, and after everyone arrived, we took off around 1:30 and fished until almost 7:00 PM. We came up short of our limit for Thursday’s fishing with 18, but what we lacked in numbers we made up for in quality. We had some nice sized King salmon and not as many of the smaller Coho salmon as we were expecting.
Our hotel rooms were included in the price of the trip, and they didn’t put us up in some dive motel either. We stayed at the Radisson in Pleasant Prairie, in large rooms that had a king sized Sleep Number bed, and a separate area with a pull out couch. We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, a Milwaukee area chain called the Chancery, where we had good food and large beers. After dinner Gary wanted to sit in the hot tub so he did that while the rest of us went to bed to be ready for our early morning of fishing.
This morning the alarm went off at 4 AM, and we were on the boat by 5 ready to go fishing some more. By about 10:30 we had caught our limit and then some and we headed back into shore. This time we got some trout, king salmon, and more cohos. There were a few times where we had multiple fish on the line at a time, and we even had three on at a time at least once.
This was my second trip fishing in Lake Michigan, and both times were a lot of fun. We went through Kinn’s Sportfishing both times, and I can’t recommend them highly enough. From the comfortable and clean boats, to the friendly professional staff, to the excellent accommodations these guys know how to treat their guests. We joked that this wasn’t really fishing, it was more like catching since they did all the hard work and we just had to reel in the fish. Mike told the story of another company he had gone through out of Kenosha, and he said they were the polar opposite of Kinns. We were all very happy, and we will all be back fishing with Kinn’s again.
We came home and fired up the grill and ate some of the salmon right away. I made one with butter and lemon juice, and the other with a mixture of soy sauce, brown sugar, lemon pepper, and garlic powder. Both fish turned out fantastic. I can’t wait to eat the rest of the salmon we have now.
