Blown Off

[Pete Collin]

Hello All,

 

Took another old fishing buddy Joe out today to jig for lakers.  Report called for low, variable winds and scattered showers.  Drove out in the fog and steered pretty wide of my hotspot.  Caught 2 smallish lakers before the sun came up enough for me to realize I wasn't where I wanted to be.  Meanwhile the wind is building out of the north and the drizzle became steady rain.

 

Found good numbers of fish in my hotspot and jigging became more challenging from the boat being blown at a good clip despite having 2 bags out.  Joe managed to catch one small one.  Then suddenly we drifted over the tightest concentration of laker blips I have ever seen.  I don't know what they were doing down there but I quickly hooked one that refused to budge off the bottom for the longest time.  After a long fight I netted a 32 incher.  I told Joe to leave his jig down there with all those fish, but he didn't get a strike (which suprized me)  I tried to mark that spot on the handheld GPS but it's hard to do while fighting a fish.  It requires 3 taps of a button, I only hit it twice.  We made another drift and I got one more - a nice 28 incher.  We found ourselves circled like planets by two trolling boats.  I wondered if the other guys also knew about the tight group of lakers, or if they just saw us fighting fish and figured they'd get cozy.

 

The wind kept building out of the north to the point where walking around the boat became a struggle.  There weren't whitecaps but it became clear that if the waves got any bigger things were going to get hairy.  I was promised winds out of the west and southwest.  Learn your damn meteorology, willya?  We pulled in the drift bags and surfed back to the launch.  Total fishing time: 2 1/2 hours  with a 3 hour round trip by car.  We found a wonderful breakfast place in Brockport and hoped things would improve after we were fed.  Full of banana pancakes, we checked the weather.  It was still drizzling.  our clothes were soaked and it was easy to call it off and try another day.

 

I bet you those other 2 boats stayed out there and hammered them!

 

Pete Collin

 

www.pcforestry.com

[reeleyz]

You did good anyway!

[choo-choo]

I love the effort Pete !  Get used to the lake O conditions being different than the forecast....glad you headed in and stayed safe. Some nice fish,.... and a great sit down breakfast.....,sounds like a good morning to me!  (BTW, don't forget to contact me for the Salmon River Steely get together this fall with jay and friends)

[Pete Collin]

Steve,

 

Agreed!  I haven't been to Pulaski in 5 years.

[Xxx]

Pete that's a awesome looking laker, sounds like you had a good day despite the wind and getting circled like a bunch of sharks, years ago we used to jig for lakers up in Canada over 100FT of water with buck tail jigs, usually bright yellow jig with tinsel tail, blue & silver caught them up to 20#s like that, never gave it a thought for lake O. Keep up the good work and keep us posted with your catches, I find that very interesting. Thanks PAP