Mark Twain once said reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. Add to that the report there are no salmon being caught in northern Lake Huron’s traditional charter ports such as Oscoda.

Coho and chinook, along with lake trout steelhead, still show up in Dave Cronk’s cooler. Cronk is a charter captain who operates Kingfisher Charters out of Oscoda’s Main Pier Marina. He is one of two at the marina who use a technique commonly used on the West Coast and in Alaska. He said his catches prove salmon fishing in Lake Huron, while on life support, isn’t quite dead yet.

Cronk claims chinook salmon make up approximately 10 percent of his bag, especially during June, in deep water. In late August and September, when fish move closer, he said he has caught up to four a day during mornings off the Oscoda breakwall.

DNR biologists said he’s doing very well if that is the case, on the few fish that remain in the lake.

Although Cronk hooked no salmon on a recent trip, his dated photo galleries show his success.

"By numbers, our vessel does better than 90 percent of the boats in our marina and the one next to it," Cronk said. "The method I use works."

I joined Cronk as he headed out one recent July morning with four other hopeful anglers aboard: 60-year-old Larry Adams, of Lake Odessa, and his father, Jack, 82, of Mecosta; and 13-year-old stepbrothers Aiden Adams and Kendrik "K.J." Cummings, also of Lake Odessa. Though they caught no salmon, they ended up boating three lakers, and immediately booked another trip in August.

We left the dock before daylight, heading out of Oscoda’s harbor until we reached 50 feet of water. Then Cronk pulled out what he said is the key to his success: frozen herring and alewives he buys from a New York supplier on the Internet.

Bill Semion | The Grand Rapids PressCharter fishing captain Dave Conk readies a cut bait rig on Lake Huron.
He filets the fish, trimming them to fit in a "meat" rig teaser head made by Oscoda’s Big Water Tackle. On one filet he retains the tail, on another, he doesn’t for variety sake. The filet is secured inside the teaser, behind a glow-in-the-dark dodger.

Cronk’s calls his second Big Water tackle rig a "sushi fly," a filet held on with copper wire and tucked under a flash fly, all towed behind a large dodger called a "rotator." It’s all following a string of small hookless attractors imitating a baitfish school. The rotating attractor, he said, imitates a salmon slamming into the school, and the small attractors simulate stunned baitfish.

For lakers and salmon in August, Cronk places the bits of alewife inside a trolled Brad’s Super Bait lure, made to hold either a scent pad or filleted pieces.

His lures are hooked to sensitive 30-pound test, 8-pound diameter line so thin it gets to depth quickly, and either fished with Dipsey Divers or on cannonballs.

It wasn’t long before Cronk’s technique produced. At 63 feet, about five miles offshore, the first lake trout hit 45 minutes after leaving the dock. He handed the rod off to 13-year-old Aiden, and after netting the 8-pounder for the youngster, Cronk said he likes to be first on the water because he has caught as many as five fish by daylight before his fellow charters have left the dock.

"A lot of guys will shoot out to 110 feet of water right off. I’ll start in 50 feet, and set a lead core line 400 feet back as well. That way I’ve got the brass band working closer to the boat, and one way back where it’s nice and quiet," Cronk said.

"When the sun comes up, I usually change out the sushi flies to the teaser rigs," he said.

Just then, the second fish hit, in 75 feet of water, on one of the sushi rigs, and it was K.J.’s turn. Roughly 30 minutes later, the third fish hit in 90 feet of water and was landed by grandfather Jack. The fourth and last came a few hours later.

The salmon Cronk hooks could be one of Michigan’s planted fish. The DNR still plants some northern streams, according to Tim Cwalinski, a DNR fisheries biologist based in Gaylord. Those salmon are marked with a chemical marker that can be seen with special tests. But Cwalinski said it’s a good bet some of the fish Cronk catches are wild, Canadian fish.

"If they’re not marked, they are obviously wild. We don’t document a ton of natural reproduction on our side of the lake, but they do document lots of wild production on the Canadian side," Cwalinski said.

Dave Borgeson, a DNR fisheries supervisor in Gaylord, said some 400,000 salmon are planted in Rogers City annually, and in 2010, the DNR creel census only accounted for 2,100. In the Au Sable, where about 170,000 are planted, the census counted a scant 37 returns.

Canadian streams, he said, produce 10 to 15 million salmon smolts a year, dwarfing Michigan’s planting program in Huron, but because of the lack of forage fish, most don’t survive. He said Huron’s salmon are now mostly targeting smelt, which are beginning to make a comeback in some northern Lake Huron streams.