Sarley: The pleasures of a visit to the Upper Peninsula and fishing Lake Superior

Every year I take a trip with my family to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It is one of the most perfect places I have ever been to in my life.

I don’t do very much fishing, just family stuff. My daughter, Michelle, and her husband, Joe, have lived up there for a decade and it is always a pleasure to get to spend time with them.

We base our vacation out of Au Train, which is about 35 miles east of Marquette right on the shores of Lake Superior. The annual trip consists of my family, including my wife, three adult children and spouses. We also go with my cousin Laura Heimburger and her husband Stu, her dad and her three children. We are joined by their in-laws, Vince and Debbie Luoma, who are U.P natives but now live in the Chicago suburbs. Stu and Debbie’s parents, Kathie and Larry Heimburger, live in the U.P. and spend the week with us.

The vacation consists of plenty of relaxing, along with water skiing, tubing, boating, sightseeing, napping, excellent dining and the consumption of copious amounts of liquid beverages. The weather is normally perfect and the whole group gets along famously.

Vince Luoma grew up in the U.P. and is one of the best guys I have ever met. He is a good human being and a solid citizen. He is smart, athletic, can fix anything with his own two hands, can cook like a television chef and is a master at most of the outdoor recreational sports.

A few years back, I had the pleasure of meeting Vinnie’s father, Ron Luoma. Ron was a very personable gentleman who for years and years owned a barbershop in Marquette. I’d guess it was the kind of shop that was habituated by a group of regulars, à la Floyd’s in the town of Mayberry. Ron had a great sense of humor and although small of stature, had a much larger personality.

Ron Luoma was a big fisherman who owned a boat and was usually out on the dangerous waters of Lake Superior after he closed his barbershop for the day. Ron sold his boat and put his tackle into storage over a decade ago for health reasons. Unfortunately, he died in 2015.

For years now, Vince has been saying how much he’d like to drag Ron’s lake trout fishing tackle out of storage and give a little big-water fishing a whirl. Every year it seems like something comes up that puts the laker fishing on the back burner. Vince always talked wistfully about his memories of chasing lakers with his father and I’m not sure why it was always put on the back burner.

One day at noon, Vinnie, Stu Heimburger and his son, Cullen, pulled up to my cabin, asking if I’d like to head out to Lake Superior to fish for lake trout. Vince was dying to see if we’d finally be able to catch a trout on his father’s antique fishing tackle.

There was a storm in the forecast, but there was no way that we were going to cancel this outing. We launched our ski boat and headed west toward Marquette. Our target was a depth of 115 feet. In 70 feet of water, Vinnie began to haul out his dad’s old trolling equipment. It appeared to have been borrowed from an antique fishing tackle museum. Our boat was not set up with rod holders, so we would be holding the rods in our hands as we trolled for lake trout and Coho salmon.

I had no expectations of actually catching a fish, but I was silently praying that Vince would catch something on his dead father’s antique fishing tackle.

Did we? I’ll let you know next week.

• Daily Herald Outdoors columnist Steve Sarley can be reached at sarfishing@yahoo.com.