Larry Smith Outdoors - North shore superior steelhead

- Alright team charge! - Take me out on the water. - We eat when fish eat. - Way out in the woods. Where the breathing is easy and the living is good. - I'll you can do is just laugh. - Out in the great outdoors. - Larry Smith Outdoors is brought to you in part by Badger Sportman, Bartlein Barrels, Warrior Boats, Wilderness North Lodge, Big Snow Resort, Hard and Soft Fishing, Suzuki, Lynch Mukwonago, *** Smith's Bait and Tackle, Wings Over Wisconsin, Kmiec Law Firm, Deep Freeze, Cold Snap, Otter, Norm's Ag and Jiffy. And remember it's a great day to be allve. - Out in the great outdoors. - Holy Moly. - You know the cool part of my job and Dan's job is that we travel a lot without sleeping. Right now, it's what, it's 2:24 in the morning and actually I started this day off yesterday. I got up at 3:30 and guided on the Wolf River yesterday all day long and now with this suit jumped in the truck and we're headed up here to Duluth. We're actually going to be fishing some of the tributaries off of Lake Superior with Hannah Hudson and Barb Carey and they've got a guide up here we're going to be using and we're pretty pumped up about it but you know that's the cool thing about what we do but I always say, you know what, I'll sleep when I die. One of the key things for us to travel and all the time staying awake is of course, guess what? The power pop, The Sun Drop. I'm on my third one and we only got an hour and a half left to go and we're going to be in Duluth. This is actually pretty cool. I haven't seen anybody smelt. - Hey this week on Larry Smith Outdoors we took a break for once for Wally fishing and we decided to come up here and do some fishing up here on the tributary of Lake Superior and we said, you know what? If we're fish steel hunt we're going to hire someone who knows what they're doing and Garett tell us what we're going to be doing today. - Well we're out here in, on the north shore of Lake Superior, we're going to go corking for steelhead, you know it's no more difficult than bobber fishing for catfish. - I was glad that you weren't going to take me fly fishing because it would be ugly. The cork I think I can handle but yeah so we're going to be corking for steelhead today huh? - Absolutely, we're going to use night crawlers and spawn eggs which are actual fish eggs that are tied into a mesh bag. - Can you eat them? - You know I wouldn't. I have seen them on the menu at sushi restaurants but I can't cure these with salt. There's borax opener. - Oh Borax? Is Borax poisonous? - It probably doesn't taste good. - Oh definitely. - Fishy? - So anyways yeah, so this is, I've never done this before. What are we looking at? I mean we're fishing holes. Are we fishing, you know, big open areas. I mean what kind of structure are we going to be fishing here today. - Yeah I don't like to mess with fish when they're actually actively spawning. There are a lot of fish that are going to be actively unraveling and. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a different strategy. We'll leave those fish alone. Let them have their babies and we're going to go target fish in holding holes so some deeper, slower holes. - Sure. - We're going to run these bobbers from here to there. We're going to catch moving fish that are moving up the spawn that are in transit moving around. - Okay. - Well, that's a more sporting way to do it and that's really what I prefer to do. - And this is pretty much all - It's completely legal to target fish unravel. - Yeah I prefer not to. - We're going to go fish deep, dark water. Work with some of these regressive moving fish. - This is all catch and release. We're not going to be eating any of these. - Absolutely. Yeah on the north shore, the wild steelhead here are by DNR regulation are catch and release. - Okay yeah that's kind of cool. - And then we have a hatchery fish program with, they're called Cannery Losrel, that are stocked in some of the tributaries from here and we may come across a hatchery fish in which case that would be a good dinner but anything wild that has maddicles to them we're going to let those go. - I'd rather just let them all go. Hey stay tuned. Let's see what happens today in Larry Smith Outdoors and again we're giving the Wallys a break and Garett's going to put us on some steelhead right? - We're going to give it a try. - Okay let's see what happens. I'm excited about doing this. Hey we got a couple special guests today. What do we have out here today? - Absolutely. We have Hannah Stonehouse Hudson. - Yep. - Whose a really amazing photographer and we have Barb. - Leceary. - Leceary. - Yep. - From, she's been on the show I think a few times. - She has. We love fishing with her and she always brings some good luck with us too so you know, it should be an interesting day. Let's see what happens out here. - We got a great crew. Let's do it. - Let's go nail them. - The warrior story continues with the best tracking driest ride in the industry. Designed with a high degree of dead rise and bow flare to push water out and down for a smooth dry, comfortable ride. The smart trolling keel limits bound drift for enhanced boat control in the wind and with a lifetime hole warranty, Warrior Boats are built to last. Warrior Boats, a legend reborn. - Badger Sportsman Magazine. The premier outdoor magazine. Published in Oshkosh and written by Wisconsin's sportmans for Wisconsin's sportsman. Get the most out of your time in the woods or on the water. Subscribe to Badger's Sportsman Magazine today. - Hey folks, the Badgers Sportsman Magazine wants to see a picture of you having fun in the outdoors and to have a chance to win a trip with us here on Larry Smith Outdoors and a Hard and Soft Water Fishing kit, all you have to do is submit that picture to the badgersportsman.com. - When you're tying up a leader for steelhead how long of a leader do you usually go with? - You know I'm going like four and a half, four feet, somewhere in there. - Okay. What pollen test do you like to use? - Six pollen. - Okay floral carbon leader or not? - You know we're just using mono today. There are days when we use floral but the water's really panic from panic acid swabs and so it's pretty dark today and we don't need it, we're going to use the strongest stuff we can. - Okay so about three to four foot leader fly foot. - Four foot leader. And these are floats designed for steelhead fishing and they attach with surgical tubing. - Can you show us how that works? - Yeah. What you do is you slide your tubing on the line. - Oh that's slick. - And then your floats are on there and you can have different sized floats. This particular one is a 5 gram float so it'll hold 5 grams of weight. I have 6 gram ones, 7 grams ones and up to 8 so the higher and the faster the water, the bigger float we'll use and that'll allow us to hold more shot. So it's rated at a 5 gram so it'll hold 5 grams of and the tubing is all the same so you can quickly switch if you need to add more split hod. You can move this up and down without damaging your line but the biggest thing I like these for is it really lets you know what's happening in the water. If this float points down stream you're grudging bottom and you want to push it down and shallow it up. If this float points up stream you don't have enough weight and your bait is way out from your float to - And the line's getting - And the line's getting swept down stream too fast. And if you can get it to stand up and get a good tick out of it once in a while, you know every couple feet. You see it kind of twitch and tick that's - Then you know you got the magical depth huh? - You got the perfect depth. - Right. - So a lot of it saying and the streams are changing everyday and we even versus, I was out here yesterday it's dropped four or five inches since yesterday. - Holy Cow. - This river's really flushing out quick. - Yeah you were saying just what four or five days ago that the water was raging through. - It was right up through these tree roots right here behind us. - Wow. - So you can hardly even get in here and safely wait and fish. The one thing about the north shore it's a little bit of a challenge is timing the run. You know you just need to find water but not flood stage. - Okay. Now how many split shot will you put on? Does that really depend on the current too? - It really depends on the current. That's something that I'm always adjusting and playing with. That's one thing that you can really do that'll make a big difference, is you know try to go in with more split hedge, try in go in with less split hedge. It's just going to make that bait drift differently. - And that's the key to it. You were saying earlier is. - Matching the speed of the current. Absolutely. - Yep and it's kind of like when we're in the boat, vertical jigging we're trying to match the speed of the current with the boat. - Absolutely. - And this is the, the flow is the boat. - Yeah the fish have really good instincts and they just know how fast that food goes past them so you just want to get - And if it's going to slow, they're not going to fall for it and if it's going too fast the same thing. - Absolutely. - So just matching it is big. - And what we try to do a split hedge is we'll start off small at the bottom. - Yeah you were saying that before. That's very interesting. - And then go larger split hod as we go up the line and what that does is when you think of the hydrology, the current on the surface is a lot faster than the current down where the fish are. - Okay. - And so what you can do is by going smaller and getting bigger as you go up, you can actually slow your float on the surface and more match that bottom current. - Yeah I would have never guessed that at all. And what makes perfect sense what you're saying. Very interesting to how intense you are by watching the way that float goes down the river. Here we go. I got one. Looks like a nice fish too. - Boy that's a big fish. Good job. - Yeah it's a nice fish. - That's a big fish. Take your time. Use your palm if you have to. - Yep. I got. Woah, where's he going? - Okay here we go. - Woah here he is. - Oh wow. Nice fish. - It's a big buck. - A big what? - It's a big male. A big buck. Wow! Giant. - That is absolutely cool. You know on this reel, this is absolutely awesome. - Yeah you don't have any drag so it's a hand to hand combat factor. - I like to do it hand by hand. - Yeah that's what gets you addicted and coming back. - It is. Yep. It's a pure fight. Boy I tell you, there's some power there. For sure. - Yeah. - Boy you don't just crank these things in. - No. - I'll tell you that. Nice job. - That's a big buck. See how it's wild. - Now that's a wild one huh? - That's a wild fish. - Whoo, I like that. - Hooked right in the corner of the mouth here. - That was absolutely awesome. - Let me unhook him and then we'll get some shots. - Yeah. - Alright nice job. - So hand me high fives, that's the best part brother. - See you just had to go to the other side. - Kalin's has been catching multi-species fish for over 30 years from our crappy grubs to our seismic series of hybrid swim baits and grubs to our jerk minnows. - You can't see that jerk minnow can you? - To our garlic and salt impregnated waco worm. - That's a Kalin's Waco. - Our premium line of Kalin jig heads oh and our original Kalin's grubs still does a pretty good job too. - Look at that Kalin's inter-mouth right there. - Patrick what are you doing out here? - Mark, I'm going fishing this weekend but with this massive selection of trucks I can't figure out which one to take. - The brand new Lynch Mukwonago stores have a massive selection of brand new Chevrolet, Chrysler, Doge, Jeep and Ram trucks, cars, vans, and SUVs. Make your next stop at the all new state of the art Lynch Mukwonago dealerships today. - Nobody sells for less than Lynch. - I got another one. Look at it. Look I got another one you guys. Whooo, now we're having fun. - That fish is really hot. - Look at that. Holy cats. Look at this. This is unbelievable you guys. You know I've never done this inland steelhead fishing before and I'll tell you it's, this is absolutely. Hey Barb, I've got another one. This is absolutely a ball. Is this typical for these fish to fight this hard? - Yeah you know this one. - I can't even move. - This one is brighter than that last one - It is. - If you see it, it's real chrome. - Yeah I can't even move this fish. - And it seems like the fresher they are out of Lake Superior, the harder they go to. - No kidding. Wow. - You know he's actually going up stream in this current. - Yeah I hope he doesn't go too far cause I'm not running through them rocks. - Woah woah woah woah woah. Woah, that fish is... He's crazy. Woah. Don't go that way. I don't think he's ready to go yet. - I don't know if he is. - No he's pretty green yet. - Well that's a big fish. - That's a nice fish. Holy cats. Look it. I can't believe, look at that fish go. Holy cats. No that line is wrapped. - Wrap his last shoot up. - Yeah I got him lasso. Boy you see that very often? - Yeah they'll roll like that and lasso themselves up. - Alright. Woohoo. Alright, that is a ball. Boy, I'll tell you that is a lot of fun. I really didn't think it was going to be this much fun. Oh that is, look how pretty that fish. Now tell us what's the difference between the one I caught a little while ago and this one? - You know you can tell this fish is just a lot brighter, you can see how silver his sides are? - The other one was real dark. - It was real dark and so that fish had been in the river for a long time. This fish just probably just came in from Lake Superior last night even. I mean it's really a bright fish. - Right. - The other thing is that the other one was a male, you can see it had a big poke jaw. This is a hen. You know you can tell this is full of eggs, it's a big spawner fish. - Yep, pretty fish. - Really a pretty fish. - Beautiful. This is awesome. - This is... - This is what it's all about. There she goes. Oh yeah. Nice. - So what we're going to try is we're going to try. - What do you got going there? Yeah. - We're going to try a little bead fish and that's a tangerine swirl. That's been a really good one for me out here. - Okay. - It's just supposed to imitate a little single egg coming downstream. What I'm going to do is just thread it on there and this is called a peg it. You jam this peg it in there. - Oh that's interesting. I've never seen that before. - That holds it in place. Lock it in there tight. You're going to tie your hook on the bottom and then we'll just trim off the peg plastic ends. - Very interesting. - You got to be half mountain goat. Yeah. - There you go. Woooo. - You're not going to like this bud. - Looks like fun Barb. Nice job. What? We're not on the Wolf River. Nice job Barb. - Stay with him. Keep it tight. - That is awesome. - That's a big steelhead. - Oh that's no sucker there. Nice fish. - That's the biggest fish of the day. - That is a nice fish. - That's big. - You're not going to just pull that one in huh? - Oh that's a 28-29. That's at least. - Woah. Nice fish. - That's big. - That's a nice fish. Yep. - 28-29. - Got to love that. Hey I'll take a sucker if I can catch a fish that size. That is a, nice job. - We got him. Yeah. - Nice job. Nice job. - That's a giant Barb. - Nice fish. Beautiful. - It doesn't get any better. - They're so big and powerful. I mean my heart is still going about 200 beats a minute. - That's great. And you worked hard for it. You earned that fish. - I do feel like I earned it. Physically, I mean you - Absolutely. We've been up and down hills and mountain going country basically you know. - You have to do everything right for it all to come together. - Absolutely. Well, congratulations. I couldn't be happier for you. That's fantastic. - Hey! Welcome to the kitchen. I am Shotgun Steve Shafer and this is Junior Shotgun Cody Shafer. We are making Hollandaise Sauce Salmon English muffin benedict. This is going to be. I already fileted up some salmon off the salmon a buddy of mine gave me. We're going to season up, put it in a frying pan. I have the water boiling ready. I have the hollandaise sauce started and let's make this recipe work huh? Let's go Cody. Put a little salt and then the pepper. Sprinkle evenly on everything. We're going to throw this on the frying pan. Cook this up. This is a little different. Instead of using bacon, a friend of mine said well why don't you try salmonize. It's really awesome. He was at a restaurant one time. So I threw it up there and man this is really good. And this salmon, only takes a couple seconds to make in a frying pan. A little granulated garlic. I'm going to make eggs twice. I have one set of scrambled eggs and one set of poached eggs. Some people don't really care for poached eggs so I'm going to make scrambled eggs and poached eggs. Let's go back to the stove and get all our stuff started. - Hi guys. So I'm going to put the salmon in for the hollandaise or the benedict. - Benedict. - Salmon Benedict - Yep bud you're going to get done. It's real fast. They cook so fast. See the outside of the fish turning that late orange color? That's what you want. Take a couple slices on. Each piece just like that. See the color of it right there folks? How it's, you want to see that pinkish color. That's perfect. Don't over cook it cause it really gets rubbery. Salmon does. Alright I'm going to teach you guys how to make a poached egg. This is really tough. Our hollandaise sauce is getting done back here. Let's shut that off and we can put that over the top. The reason why you put vinegar in her is to keep your egg white. Otherwise it turns a different color. Put about 2 tablespoons of vinegar in her and here's a little secret I learned. Get the spatula. Get this water spinning. Spin it and spin it and spin it. Get it going and what happens is when you crack your egg in her, the egg will stay right in the middle of that water spinning and it'll make one big. See how the egg stays right in the middle of that spinning water and that keeps all your egg and the yolk in one spot. This will take about 3 to 4 minutes to cook this egg. See how that egg stayed right perfect in the middle like that? Alright we're finishing up. Hollandaise sauce is done. Eggs are poached. I don't know why I started with mine first but I guess I'm the chef. It's my segment. Huh Junior? - Yeah I don't mind as long as it's being done. - We made scrambled eggs for his cause sometimes, to change it up a hair. Alright bud. Want to put a little paprika on top of that? And we'll stick some forks in it and see how it looks. - Do you want some on yours? - Oh heck yes. It's the best part of the meal pretty much. Man that benedicts smell good. Heard of paprika. Holy. Did you check that one out guys? That's a monster. Here we go. - Man. - Check out how nice that salmon looks inside that fish. I mean the benedict. This is good. I really appreciate that guy talking me into putting salmon in this benedict. - Yes, very good. - Once again, Smith you got to come over man. Invite me. Let's go cooking. I'll cook the stuff up for you. - The latest issue of the Badger Sportsman will be in our readers hands within the week. Not a subscriber? Now is the time. You won't want to miss this issue. It's packed full of everything you need to know for open water success. No matter what species you're targeting. For availability in your area and subscription information, check out badgersportsman.com today. - That, is what it's all about. - Okay let him go where he wants to go. You know kind of reel back and forth. Yep and then when he really runs you got to let him. You got to let him go. Keep your rod bent. Good job. Nice fishing. Good job. Woohoo. Yep, you're doing perfect with that reel. There's no drag on that reel. No, no, he's there. He's there. - He's there. He's coming at you. - Okay let him run. Let him run. There you go. Good girl. - Here he comes. - Oh it's a dandy. Right there. Yeah it's a nice fish. There you go. Oh he's going to make one more run. You're doing good. Nice job, nice job. - Nope not yet. - No, no he's still green. Still green, still green. You're doing good. Just keep doing what you're doing. Okay this time. Woah woah woah. - He doesn't like you coming at him. - He says you bump me once. No, you'll get him. - Got him. - Wooo. Nice job. Alright nice job, Hannah. Woohoo. Wow, that is awesome Hannah. Nice job. - You did great with the center pinning. That is fantastic. - Nice job. Hey I'll tell you we had just a fantastic time. Ladies, Garett, all that was an awesome experience. My first time ever fishing steelhead and being up here in Duluth on Lake Superior tributaries. It was a lot of fun. Barb what do you got to say? - It was on my bucket list. I've never done it before either. It's well worth the effort. - It definitely is. - Garett did such a great job. - He did an awesome. - Well thank you. Everybody got a wild Lake Superior steelhead today. Doesn't get any better than that. - That was awesome. Anything you got to say Hannah to close the show off? - I finally got my Lake Superior. - Hey Garett. If people want to get a hold of you, how can they get a hold of you and give you a call that experience one of these great trips. - Absolutely. I have a website. It's slabseekerfishing.com and I've also got a Facebook page that Facebook.com/slabseekerfishing. - Okay that sounds awesome. Thanks again for watching our show this week and just remember it's always a great day to be alive. An old ancient Indian trick I was taught a long time ago cause there was no bottle opener. You see that? Um there was a really big steelhead. Very educated one and we threw it in there and look what it did? It's very, very impressive.