Sunday Chat is a weekly feature appearing in the Blade’s print and digital platforms each Sunday.
Spencer Berman is a Sylvania native and 2007 Northview grad who has made muskie fishing his career, and one where he has earned a reputation as one of the top muskie guides in the Midwest.
Berman operates Spencer's Angling Adventures and focuses his attention on treating his clients to some of the best muskie fishing on the planet on Michigan's Lake St. Clair, which straddles the border with Ontario and drains the upper Great Lakes, eventually feeding into the Detroit River and Lake Erie. With fishing partner Matt Quintano, Berman won the 2018 Professional Musky Tournament Trail World Championship.
Berman also works the Detroit River and targets walleye and smallmouth bass with his clients early in the season before all of his attention is locked in on muskie fishing. He admits that there are much easier ways to earn a living than the daily pursuit of a nasty, moody, cantankerous slippery submarine with a mouth armed with finger-severing teeth, but he relishes the challenge of facing off with Esox masquinongy, the muskellunge.
The Blade: What got you started in a career in fishing?
Berman: I started fishing with my grandfather in ponds and eventually did some local bass tournaments and did pretty decent, but I pivoted to muskies and in my first pro muskie tournament I cashed a check and I was just 17. But you can't fish tournaments for a living, so I got a guide license and did trips for other guys before starting out on my own after about a year.
The Blade: What was the inspiration or motivation to fish for a living?
Berman: It was my grandfather who helped me down the path to discover my love of fishing. It was fishing the ponds in our Sylvania neighborhood that really got me hooked on fishing and everything involved with it.
The Blade: Many guys dream about fishing for a living but very few ever actually make it a career. How have you managed to make it work?
Berman: It is probably a multitude of things, but a big part of it is I do genuinely love fishing. You have to have that drive to do it and want to be on the water. But one thing that allowed me to succeed where so many others fail, and there are a lot of good fishermen out there who are starving, is that I had some business sense. You have to return calls and emails and communicate with your customers. You can't just fish, and I feel like I struck a pretty good balance with that, combining my love for fishing with some sense of how to run the business side of things.
The Blade: What does an average year look like?
Berman: A normal year usually means around 250 days on the water, and doing about three sport shows a year now, although I used to do more. I throw in a dozen or so seminars and I write for a list of fishing magazines. And then there is the social media side of it and that is everything now, so I spend a lot of time on that during the season and in the off-season. I also get a new boat every year and do all of my own rigging. That involved 115 hours of rigging last winter – all of the wiring, graphs, trolling motors -- when you fish at this level, the boats are very complicated. I also talk to clients and do the scheduling for about 400-500 trips for my guiding company. I'll also try and cherry-pick a couple of tournaments to fish in, since I still love the competition.
The Blade: How spoiled are the fishermen in this region, to be sitting on top of some of the greatest smallmouth, walleye, and muskie fishing on the planet, and maybe not realize or appreciate that?
Berman: That is the understatement of the century. I have traveled all over the planet and it drives me nuts that most people around here don't realize that Lake St. Clair might be the best in the world as a trophy destination for multiple species of fish. Overall, it is an unbelievable fishery that we have right here at our front door, a truly mind-blowing one.
The Blade: What are your major concerns today about the future of Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River fishery?
Berman: It is tough to say but we always come back to the fact that this is a natural fishery, not one supported at all by stocking, so we are a bit insulated from the ups and downs that other places have. And that is good since stocking it is tied to the MDNR, which is tied to funding, which is tied to politics. Invasive species are certainly a concern, but my number one frustration right now is the lack of conservation in regard to muskies. A trophy muskie is probably 20 years old and this is not a sustainable resource if people on both sides of the border are harvesting more fish. This is a growing problem and a big concern of mine.
The Blade: What is the best approach for Spencer Berman and his clients when chasing big muskies?
Berman: You do whatever you can, but there are those times when the community spots are where the fish are so you fish there. But muskies, especially the bigger fish, have all been caught before, and the more times they have been caught, the tougher they are to catch again. These are difficult fish to catch, and that challenge is what I enjoy. You take all of your experience and knowledge and lessons learned, and then use that to try and put your clients on the fish. But every day is different, with new challenges and adventures.
First Published October 15, 2023, 2:00 p.m.
