I took last Thursday & Friday off and enjoyed a super long weekend up north (New Liskeard area) I fished every day I was up there. Luckily the weather held up decently, I only fished in the rain on Canada Day. Here are some of the highlights.
Canada Day morning, the first fish of the trip, a 5.5 lbs sheephead:
I started fishing around 7:00 that morning, had my limit by 10:00, on the 2 mile drive back home I met up with my dad who was coming to see me so we turned back and got another walleye before lunch. We got 2 more after lunch. Here are the 5 AM fish. Nothing huge but great for that night's fish fry.
The next morning I fished with my brother. This doesn't seem notable but my brother doesn't fish...ever!!! The last we fished together was when we were both living at home and my parents would take us out perching on the pontoon. That was about 6 or 7 years ago. The kid actually outfished me. We got no walleye this morning as I think I just hit the tail end of the run on that spot, we did get a few smallie around 1lbs and some big redhorse. Here's the biggest fish of the morning, a 3lbs or so redhorse.
Over the next couple days I got to fish with my cousin one afternoon and my aunt one morning. Nothing particularly notable happened, we only got one walleye each day, quite a few smallies and some more redhorse. Muskie (my dog) tried to eat a bee and ended with a very swollen mouth for a couple hours.
The day I was particularly looking forward to was Saturday. My dad, my uncle and I headed 1.5 hrs north to Iroquois Falls to fish the power dam there. This spot will typically yield everyone's limit and more often than not we'll get some big walleye.
We got to the spot around 9:00. Two groups were already there. Some guys fishing for pike were of no concern to us, two other older gentlemen were occupying the sweet spot. They already had 4 walleye on the stringer including 2 2lbers and a 5 or 6lber. The fishing was slow for us early on. We got lots of small sauger, and the odd bullhead or mooneye. Around noon things picked up and by 1:00 we had 5 keepers. Again around 3:00 we hit a run of nice walleye and we had 10 by 4:00. By 6:00 we had our 12 fish. Nothing particularly large, one 19.5" 2.2lber and another decent 17 3/4" walleye. The rest were all between 14 and 15.5" except for a 2 small sauger that were deep hooked.
Interesting story about the 19.5". I hook him, bring him to shore, as we're netting him the line breaks about 12" from the knot...a nick in the line from all the rocks I figure. At this point I'm saying things I normally wouldn't say in front of family members, then my dad yells out: "Yannick, get the net!!" while I was fighting the fish, the fish got tangled in my dad's pickerel rig! So I net the fish and the cluster and hooks, line and sinkers attached to it. The fish has my rig in his mouth and my dad's bottom hook is hooked onto my rig's top hook...talk about lukcy.
The day's catch:
The day's biggest, 2.2 lbs, 19.5" and a great story to tell:
not the best picture of the bigger one, just to put in perspective, he's the top one in the sink.
That's it for now! Tight lines everyone.
Yannick
