Over the last three weekends, I've been out chasing trout up in the mountains. Two weeks ago, I was shocked to see that it was another climate altogether up there.
Overhanging trees due to lots of heavy snow in late winter made a mess of the roads and unless you had a chainsaw or a Pontiac Sunfire
, you weren't getting anywhere. This pic is NOTHING compared to what was up there, I was just too discouraged to take pics.
Once we arrived at a few lakes, this was the scene: Ice fishermen!!!
On some of the smaller lakes we were able to brake a bit of ice with the boat and/or oars but it was a complete waste of time.
A week ago, I got out with my bro and our cousin from Sudbury to fish for lakers. After packing the boat with all of our gear, we portaged a gruelling 30 minutes to the lake. This day was extremely warm for springtime with no cloud cover and the lakers weren't cooperative at all. We didn't get a single bite for over five hours.
We decided to bite the bullet early and portage out mid-day and try our luck at large brook trout instead of risking a laker skunk. When we got to the lake in question, my cousin couldn't believe that large brookies lurked in a "ditch" as he called it. Back in Sudbury, they call small lakes ditches. He guessed that the lake was no more than 20 feet deep when it is in fact closer to 50 feet in depth. This small lake had tons of minnows and baitfish in the shallows and this is the perfect recipe for large brookies. Just because the lake is tiny, it certainly doesn't mean that the fish aren't big as I've caught plenty of big specks in this lake over the years. Well, as luck would have it, the Sudbury boy shattered his previous PB and boated this pig measuring 19 inches and weighing in at 3 pounds, 4 ounces.
My 3 year old son always likes to get up and close to the eaters that I bring home right before I fillet them.
My cousin's large brookie easily fed 3 adults and my little guy.
This past weekend, I got out for some lakers with my bro and Fish-Hawk's Frog Eyes.
Frog Eyes and his bro moved to the east coast over the past 2 years. Last fall, we began planning for them to come fishing some of our old haunts in the Ottawa area for 4 days in early May. Unfortunately they had a bad car accident on the way to Ottawa so the trip was off. They were o.k. but their car was totalled so they went back home to rest their aching bodies. Long before the accident occurred, Frog Eyes had already booked a work related flight out of Ottawa at the end of the trip. He flew in on Saturday and was in town for less than 24hrs so we got out for an afternoon/evening of back lake lakers.
Frog Eyes with a keeper laker. We caught a dozen and missed dozens more during an action packed session.
We arrived back at my place late Saturday night. Frog Eyes had an early Sunday morning flight out of Ottawa so we quickly filleted two lakers and baked some home made fries. Since there are no lakers on the east coast, Frog Eyes was eager to have a freshly caught laker meal. I enjoyed that midnight snack just as much as he did. Until next time my friend, it's always a pleasure fishing with you.
If I'm lucky I'll get to sneak out for one last monster brookie quickie but if I don't, it's all good.
From now 'till when I'm back fishing regularly once again, I'll be living vicariously through you, Fish-Hawkers. So keep those fishing reports coming.
