The Fish Dynasty of Lake Superior
My dad, Don Dahl was an avid angler to say the least. He would rather fish than sleep. Braving, the frigid weather of the north shore, to stand in a half frozen river fishing for steelhead, or traveling to Canada in search of giant sized brook trout. Lake Superior had a special attraction to him. In the late 60’s when the lake trout started reappearing along the south shore, he would trailer his boat to Cornucopia Wisconsin to catch some of the newly stocked lake trout. He built planer boards from 2×6’s with crude releases made from clothes pins, from which he would drag his own hand made rapalaas, carved from cedar and covered with aluminum foil. He learned of the boards from his father who used them in Norway as a boy, and from his own navy experience. As the trout population expanded in the Duluth area he experimented with down rigging, using a WW II mortar as a model he made a mold to cast downrigger weights and referred to them as “Bombs”. His first downriggers were manual. Soon he added a motor (rear window motors from ford station wagons). He machined the spools and pulleys on a lath in his basement. In 1976 he bought the Happy Hooker, a 30 foot Marinette, along with his younger brother Ray Dahl, started the first charter fishing business in Duluth. It wasn’t long before the boat was rigged with 5 of his electric downriggers. In his last year of fishing he won top prizes in all three fishing contests on Western Lake Superior. He passed away too early at age 63 and left the “Happy Hooker” to his sons Peter and Jon Dahl who carried on the tradition. Thirty years later the business is thriving with two of his grandsons joining the fleet, and two great granddaughters working as mates. Today the equipment and lures are not homemade but the Dahl’s are still innovators of new equipment and fishing techniques, using underwater cameras to better their insights to the habits of fish. The fishing has also improved over those early days. In fact the MN DNR has stopped stocking lake trout and considers the fishery restored to pre lamprey days leaving the Dahl brothers and their families a fish dynasty to pursue what they love to do best FISH.
