Gorgeous colors fill the eastern skies before 5 a.m. on Lake Michigan, and you’re sipping a cup of steaming-hot coffee to wash down a fresh-baked doughnut.
Or maybe the sun has just dipped below the western horizon on a sultry summer night, and you’re gripping an ice-cold can of your favorite beverage.
The lake is calm — barely a ripple — and your mind drifts.
Suddenly, a fishing rod dips violently toward the water’s surface and begins thrashing as line furiously melts from the reel. The sound of a screaming drag has everyone in the boat moving at the same time, and you lunge to grab the rod from its holder.
Fish on!
That absolutely intense experience is repeated tens of thousands of times each summer off Kewaunee and Door counties, the state’s top producers of Chinook (“king”) salmon. Using mandatory charter harvest reports and creel census data, the Department of Natural Resources estimated that more than 74,000 Chinooks came off of the K/D Peninsula last year, 45 percent of the entire state total. K/D Country was also No. 1 in the rainbow trout (steelhead) catch, with nearly 27,000, about 40 percent of the state total.
Whether you take a trip on a charter boat, launch your own rig or step aboard the vessel of a friend, each outing brings a chance that the next fish you hook will be the largest you’ve ever tangled with.
Add a tournament — with prizes and bragging rights on the line — and you’ll feel an extra adrenaline rush with each hard strike.
The 43rd annual Kewaunee/Door County Salmon tournament is one of the largest salmon fishing contests in the country. The K/D has produced a winning fish in excess of 30 pounds 27 times since it began in 1983, including a stretch of 11 straight from 1989-’99 and the past 10 in a row.
Anglers often battle fatigue as well as fish, with most participants rising between 3 and 4 a.m. to take advantage of the pre-dawn bite. A lot of the heavyweights are reeled in within an hour or two of sunrise, but certainly not all of them.
The late Ed Steffen of Fish Creek caught a tournament-record salmon of 40.07 pounds in 1993. He hooked it at noon — nap time for many sleep-deprived big lake trollers.
Tournament coordinator Kevin Naze said committee members see fish that would be big enough to win serious money every year. The only problem? The angler failed to buy a ticket before fishing. The biggest “oops — no ticket” was a 40.03-pounder caught the last day of the 1996 event. It was weighed on official tournament scales, and the angler asked where he could buy a ticket. But it was too late.
“If you’ll be fishing the area during the event, make sure you and everyone on the boat has an entry ticket,” Naze said. “You don’t even need to be a skilled angler to win. Year in and year out, it’s typically a luck of the draw thing when a giant strikes. Last year, one of the 14 30-pounders caught during the tournament was a young woman’s first-ever salmon.”
The tournament has produced winners at all five weigh-in ports — Algoma, Baileys Harbor, Kewaunee, Sturgeon Bay and Washington Island. Most years, the biggest king smacks a fly, spoon, plug or cut bait 40 to 90 feet down in 80 to 180 feet of water.
Want to give it a shot? You’ll need a fishing license, Great Lakes salmon and trout stamp, and an entry ticket. Tickets are $30 for the full tournament or $10 for youths age 10 and under. Learn more and watch for daily updates at https://www.facebook.com/kdsalmon2025/. Questions? Email gofishwisconsin@gmail.com.
Photo – Emma Mueller’s first-ever salmon last summer was one of 14 30-pound-plus Chinooks reeled in during the annual Kewaunee/Door County Salmon Tournament.
