“I was pulling my hair out, running out of hope having tried everything,” said Supinski about Aufiero’s fish. “I’d changed flies 16 or 17 times. Then I decided there must be some mysis shrimp in the lake and put one on figuring to give it one more try.
“Tom dead-drifted the shrimp and she saw it, then moved three to four feet off the bottom and just engulfed it. Tom, being a good steelhead fisherman, knew not to set the hook too early. Then he stuck the fish and all hell broke loose.”

Aufiero said he fought the salmon for 15 minutes and called it “a dogged fight,” before landing the big female.
Atlantic salmon, which are prized for their fight, have historically been found only in two places in Michigan, the St. Mary’s River and Torch Lake, where the state introduced them to create an Atlantic Salmon fishery. Atlantic salmon were once native to Lake Ontario but became extinct by 1900, according to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

Torch Lake produces world record Atlantic salmon | MLive.com.