A Taste for Lake Trout

Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan

The area we’ve been traversing for the last week or so is called the “Upper Peninsula” of Michigan. The two parts of Michigan are not connected. We’ve been travelling along the southern shore of Lake Superior.


I’ve developed a taste for lake trout. These monsters come in sizes up to 60 pounds. The flesh, unlike their smaller cousins, is an orange hue. They are delicate and delicious on the grill. Every small town along the lake has a fish store or two where you can buy lake trout, walleye, king salmon and whitefish.

It’s now been officially 3 months since we set out on this latest journey. My mind is turning to spreadsheets and databases and I’m beginning to yearn for gainful employment. Whenever that happens I try to lie down until the feeling goes away.

We went to the upper falls the first thing this morning. It’s billed as the second largest fall east of the Mississippi, but I know three right offhand that are bigger.


We move on to a tour of a cranberry farm. We bought some raisin-like dried cranberries, cranberry bar-b-q sauce, cranberry jelly and cranberry desert topping. The cranberry farm has been in the same family 125 years. Mrs. Phred says she couldn’t live in the woods and raise cranberries. I think more empathetically. I imagine all I know is cranberry farming and think about dropping everything and looking for employment in New York City. Cranberry farming has its own hooks.


Next stop is the “Shipwreck Museum” at the lighthouse on Whitefish Point. The narrows here have accounted for a fair share of the 6,000 shipwrecks and 30,000 lives claimed by the great lakes. One old Captain made me laugh. He sunk four other ships in a month from collisions before going down himself in a fifth wreck. His attitude was “I’m carrying her Majesty’s mail and they need to get out of my way”.


The bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald was on display. That one made an impression on the locals. The modern “Big Fitz”, an ore carrier built in 1958, disappeared in a 1975 November storm with 100 MPH winds. The Captain reported a bad list, no light at Whitefish Point and both radar masts swept over board. That was his last transmission. They play some eerie music in the museum and cut over to the Gordon Lightfoot song now and then. I meet the Whitefish Point light keeper and ask him why the light was down during the storm. He is strangely silent.

We buy some lake trout and wine in the afternoon in the little community of Paradise and settle in to read. They’re playing “Dark Side of the Moon” in the fish store. I’m relieved that nobody notices my t-shirt. It’s very green here, high summer. The wildflowers are lovely. The north woods are lush and green this time of year. Everything is in a hurry to grow during the short summer months. The fall here is probably lovely. In the winter, the waves on the lake create huge ice sculptures on the frozen lakeshore.


I’m dreaming of something else, maybe a long dive trip in to Truk, maybe a job as a light house keeper, maybe something else entirely, like a flat in Ankora or a 100 acre tobacco farm...

We’re heading tomorrow for Sault Ste. Marie and then Sudbury and Ottawa before entering the U.S. in Cornwall, New York. Ontario has a lot of remote lakes where you can catch walleyes and pike.

On the Shore of Gitche Gumee

The Apostle Islands National Seashore
Ashland, Wisconsin

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
-Wordsworth

They used to make you memorize the poem about the noble Hiawatha and Nokomis back in the 4th grade. I wonder if they still do that? We’re camped in our metal wigwam on the shore of Lake Superior. By surface area, it is the largest lake in the world, although two Russian lakes are deeper and contain more water.

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.
- Gordon Lightfoot

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald went down in 1975. The notion that the lake never gives up it’s dead probably derives from the fact that the average water temperature is 36 defrees F., cold enough to inhibit the bacterial growth that makes bodies float..

We drove up to the Lake of the Woods area in Ontario yesterday. We saw a number of beaver lodges on the drive. I had to lock up the brakes on the Toyota to avoid a doe and her fawn.


We ate lunch in Green’s Roadhouse near Nestor Falls. We had pickerel for an appetizer. Pickerel are a little (3-5 pound) pike. They are hard to clean. You have to cut them into small strips to avoid the bones. They are not considered very good to eat, but these chunks were breaded, fried and not bad.


The roadhouse was constructed of logs. The door jams were about 5 feet, 6 inches so we think it’s been around awhile. We had pierogi for a main course. These were pastries stuffed with cheese and potatoes and covered with bacon and sautéed onions.

Pierogi (also perogi, perogy, pirohi, piroghi, pirogi, pirogen, piroshke or pyrohy), is the name most commonly used in English speaking areas to refer to a variety of Slavic semicircular stuffed dumplings of unleavened dough and varying ingredients.


I bought an Ontario fishing license that’s good for a year. Going though immigration and customs is always a hoot these days. We'll make our way along the south shore of Superior and across Ontario and Quebec from here.