August 2015, the return of the B.I.L. and a couple pb's
I was looking forward to my brother-in-law returning to visit as his first time in Canada 4 years ago resulted in the best month of fishing I've ever had.
http://www.oodmag.com/community/showthread.php?36053-Welcome-to-Canada-Eh!-%28Ontario-edition%29&highlight=Canada
This time he was joined by his younger brother and wifie so we knew to moderate our expectations as we were very unlikely to be able to spend as much time on the water as we had the previous visit.
The priorities this year were, back lake specs, downrigging on Lake Ont and big lakers.
We started off with a little topwater largies, we found good numbers but they were all small.
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...807_121623.jpg
Got him using a baitcaster this year, didn't take him long.
Now that his appetite was whetted it was time to head into the back lakes for some speckies!
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448220196515
Took us a while to find them but we ended up getting most of them on spinners in about 17fow. To get them to hit we had to let the spinner sink all the way to bottom and as soon as it touched down, snap it off bottom and start to reel back. Almost all of them hit as soon as the spinner started to come off of bottom. It was my BIL that figured this out and I allowed him to out-fished me, as I was trying to be a good host... ya.. that's it :ashamed:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448220202499
And then we ate like kings :D
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448220202505
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448220202505
Now it was time to get into the big boat and hit some lakers.
We found we were having our best results vertically jigging for them. We did do a couple evening of downrigging with the rest of the crew along as a boat ride/ fishing combo and we caught fish but all were small (and delicious :fish: ) so when we went out to fish we predominantly jigged for them until the wind stopped us. Fish were caught on tubes, swimbaits, rattlebaits and bladebaits, hot colours were white, chartreuse, blue/silver and white chartreuse.
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448221063062
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448221063061
My BIL Luca was having a little trouble getting the hang of watching the graph and working the trolling motor at the same time and having both of us on the front deck was causing tangles so he did his best to get them fishing blind or with coaching from me when I could see his bait on the screen as well. Likely because of this I was catching the photo worthy fish and he was catching fodder for the smoker (serves him right for showing me up on the speckles :p )
We headed back down to the city and took the boat with us. The plan was to head straight out to the spot where we had had such good luck 4 years ago rigging for salmon.
It was a stinkin hot day and the lake was slick; my uncle joined us for the morning.
This year we decided to try adding a dipsey to our spread of 2 riggers and 2 rods, even if we ended up running it off of an old telescopic flippin' stick...
Second pass over our spot from 4 years ago one of the rigger rods fires and Luca is into his first salmon in 4 years. 22lbs of king took him for a good ride and he was lovin' it. When we got it into the net we saw that it had engulfed the small cheater. As I was reaching for the pliers to try to get the spoon out Luca shouts "Pesce, pesce!", I turn to grab the rod behind me that is bouncing in the holder and am also now happily into my first salmon in 4 years.
End result:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448221063066
Luca's PB Salmon!
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448221063066
After all that and getting the rig reset we were soaked, gross..
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448221063065
Now it was my uncle's turn.
We kept following the contour where we had the (almost) double but were not able to find any fish or bait so we made a big lazy circle and headed back to "the spot".
Sure enough one of the rods fires and my uncle is able to grab it and set the hook. He holds on for about 30 sec. and we see the fish come to the surface and thrash, one of the head-shakes snaps the leader and we loose the our fish killer, the atomic melon.
That was is for salmon.
After a few more passes over our spot we worked our way way down the shore.
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448221063069
We moved into shallower water and Luca was able to land his PB bow! (with a tag-along)
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448221063063
The lamprey fell into the bottom of the boat as we lifted the net aboard and slithered on the bottom while we got the bow back into the water. It was then that our slimy stowaway decided to taste Luca's sandal...
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448221063064
This creature was also returned to the water; partly to starboard, partly to port.
We were then faced with some nasty weather that kept us off of the lake one day and provided us with a skunk on the following day. Finally the day before we were to head back north we were able to get out in nice calm conditions. Unfortunately after a couple hours of looking we could not find anything inshore so given the calm conditions we decided to head out for our first foray into the blue zone. We were lucky enough to mark a fish shortly after getting set up, we decided to mark it with a waypoint and keep looking. We were not able to find any other fish so we circled back to the waypoint and we were rewarded with our first blue zone fish. We spent the next 1.5 hours making a cloverleaf with the waypoint at the middle and went 2/4.
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448224206267
After this I think we spent the rest of our fishing time chasing lakers in the early morning and then an hour or two of smallies before heading back to be social.
Over the next week or two both Luca and I would beat our previous PB lakers which up until this point were both 34"
A nice dark fish:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448224206262
My 39.25" skinny beast :D
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448224206263
Luca finding his Mecca:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448224206272
His chunky 36"er:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o...&1448224206263
