As I posted a few weeks ago 2 of my students from Athens High School qualified to fish the Edu-cast High School Fishing Championship on Lake Erie out of Turkey Point. 24 students out of about 800 qualified to fish the championship. Here are a few details of the trip.
June 26th 6:30pm
Picked up my students in Athens to make the long drive to Turkey Point. After a few stops along the way we arrive at our destination around 2:30 am.
June 27th
After a short sleep we wake up, get a bit of breakfast and head to the marina. My students meet the "pro" thet will be fishing with and load their gear into their boats. They were very excited one was fishing out of a Lund Pro v and the other out of a Ranger. After a quick meeting it was BLAST OFF at 7:30am
The students fished a variety of techniques throughout the tournament fishing for both smallies and larges. Both of their pros taught them about dropshotting and flipping in the search for big bass.
The weigh-in was at 2:30pm. Apparently both my students caught more bass then they ever had in a single day (each boat caught around 60 to 70 fish), unfortunately they couldn't find a nice kicker fish or two. My 2 teams finished in the middle of the pack with weighs of 10.8 and 11.2 pounds, the winning weigh was just over 15 pounds.
All in all they had a great day, caught lots of fish, and learned some new techniques. I personally had a nice day at the beach and walking around Turkey Point and Port Dover while they were fishing.
After the tournament we loaded up, just missing the approaching rain storm and headed for Toronto. Drove thru a crazy amount of rain on our way to Toronto.
June 28th
To make the most of our trip I arranged a salmon fishing trip for the boys with Greg Amiel (Fishing4Tails) on Lake Ontario. Neither one of the boys had ever been salmon fishing.
We meet Greg at the marina at 6am. He had motor problems during a tournament he fished on Saturday, but he borrowed his tournament partner's boat so he didn't have to cancel the trip. Very much appreciated. After a short ride out we were set up and trolling
After a short time trolling I reel in a little "shaker" chinook which is quickly released to grow another 20 pounds.
Shortly after one of the boys is fighting his first salmon and after a nice battle a chunky 24 pound chinook is in the boat.
After another "shaker" my other student is hooked up with a quality fish and lands a nice 15 pounder for his first salmon.
The dipsey drivers continue to fire and I land a nice rainbow, our only non-chinook fish of the day.
Later on one of the boys hooks into a large fish off the downrigger and the fight of his live is on. He originally had 200 feet of line out and after a couple runs the linecounter is reading 725 feet of line out.
As he continues to fight the wire dipsey goes off!!! Double header!!! and after a bit of a battle I land a 27 pound chinook.
Eventually after a long 30 minute?? battle my student lands his second salmon of his life..... it tips the scale at 33 pounds!!!!
We get a few more fish including another double header of two 23-25 pound fish.
Eventually the action dies down and we call it a day. Final total 1 rainbow, 8 chinook (between 12 and 33 pounds), 6 or 7 "shaker" chinook, 2 good fish lost and a couple hits.
Arrive back in Athens around 7 pm to end our 48 hour adventure.
Hoping to get more students out fishing next year.
Cheers,
JimW
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