Fishing for salmon for first time, teen breaks 43-year-old record

Luis Martinez, a 19-year-old who had never fished for salmon before, purchased a fishing license on Friday and by the end of Saturday was celebrating having caught a Michigan record for Chinook salmon.

Martinez, fishing on Lake Michigan with Icebreaker Charters, landed a 47.86-pound, 47.5-inch Chinook salmon that broke the state record that had stood for 43 years, as reported by the Ludington Daily News and WLNS. The old record was 46.06 pounds and 43.5 inches caught in 1978 in the Grand River in Kent County.

“I honestly fell asleep the whole way until my mom said, ‘You’re up,’ and I was like, what?” Martinez explained to WLNS. “They handed me the fishing pole and I started reeling the thing in.”

It took about 30 minutes to land.

“The first 10 minutes were tiring, my arms were sore, I was ready to give up, but my mom was yelling, ‘Don’t give up, keep reeling it in,’” Martinez told WLNS. “The fish started to jump out of the water, you could see it and they were like so excited because it was huge. I was like, it’s just a fish, there’s nothing special about it, at least that’s what I thought.”

Also on FTW Outdoors: World-record brown trout caught from canal, a known buffet for fish

Capt. Bobby Sullivan recognized the potential of the catch immediately.

“When it hit the floor, I said, ‘This thing is big,’” Sullivan told the Ludington Daily News. “And then I started second-guessing myself. I thought it was pushing 40 [pounds]. I told him, ‘You don’t realize what you just caught.’”

The catch was made at 7:30 a.m., so they continued fishing a while longer, catching one more salmon.

“The whole time I’m thinking, ‘I wish I had a scale, I wish I had a scale,’” Sullivan told the Ludington Daily News.

They eventually headed to Ray’s Auto Marine where the fish weighed more than 47 pounds on a scale that wasn’t certified, prompting a desire to get an official weight. That came at Northside Market, where the certified scale read 47.86 pounds. Later in the day, Jay Wesley, the Lake Michigan basin coordinator for the Department of Natural Resources, certified the catch as a state record.

“Unbelievable to have 47 pounds,” Wesley told the Daily News. “In fact, the last state record was in 1978, and it was snagged in the Grand River. To have this one to officially bite a lure, caught out in Lake Michigan and caught in the salmon capital of Michigan, Ludington, is pretty amazing.”

Martinez, who was fishing with his mother, sister and stepfather, told WLNS it was like winning the lottery in the fishing sense. He added, “I will go back [salmon fishing again], but I will never beat this fish. Everything is downhill from now on.”

Photos of Luis Martinez with fish and with fishing guide Bobby Sullivan courtesy of Jay Wesley of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.