Man, I love summer … shorts, sandals and especially vacation. Nearly every year my family and I rent a house for a week somewhere on Lake Michigan. The past few years it has been a house on the beach in Manistee where they let us bring our dog.

One of my favorite things about Lake Michigan is fishing for steelhead, lake trout and above all, salmon. If you have read the Great Northern Outdoors articles about how the Lake Huron’s ecology is changing, then you may suspect like me that Lake Michigan will likely soon undergo similar changes. My daughters are now ages 9, 10, 13, and 14 and I wanted to make sure that they had the experience I crave, trolling on the big blue lake hoping to hook big fish.

I logged onto fishmanistee.com and found a list of charter guides. I called Dan Golden of Fire Plug Charters and explained that I was looking for a half day and wanted my kids to reel in big fish. Dan was most helpful, to the point of recommending a friend, Captain Ray Lademan of Fishlander Sportsfishing to take us out, as Dan’s boat was due for some maintenance.

We met Captain Ray at 4 p.m. and went out of Manistee for a half day. I cannot speak highly enough about Ray and his crew, his boat and equipment were immaculate, he worked his tail off to get us on fish and he was super kid friendly, insisting that even the younger ones would reel in their own fish.

By the end of the day (we arrived back in port about 10 p.m.) we had landed 13 fish (12 kings and one coho). My youngest daughter summed it up best when she said to me “Dad, this was the best day of my life.”

I encourage you to get out and support our charter captains! I’ll post some salmon recipes soon.