Monday, deckhand, Stanley and I, took out a nice family of 4 from Florida, dad Eric the entrepreneur, mom colleen, the president of the Pampering Plumber and two teenage kids. After a little confusion about licences and where to find my boat, we got a later-than-usual start and fished for a short time at one of my regular spots before getting rained out. The skies looked pretty foreboding, like there were shunderstorms coming, so we scooted in near shore for refuge for an hour, then headed back out to another spot. With some green spoons we came back with 8 lake trout, all in the small range, but very good, lean lakers… no fats. Most were in the 150 foot depth and deeper. There was a little activity on the surface lines, but no Coho Salmon landed.
ON Tuesday, Union Carpenter Tom, Architect Chad and restrauant mangager Andy came from 8 Mile lodge to fish. Our first spot, out from Point Issabel, was a little slow, so we went farther out to fish over a hump. There were no fish on the hump, but we found some in deeper water around it. Again, there was activity on the planer boards, but we couldn’t seem to hook into them. I’m sure Chad will have nightmares about that for a while. Looking for something to blame, he joked aobut my Gander Mountain Guide Series rods AND the planer boards. I think he was just not getting a good hook-set on them. At least the Lake Trout were larger than the average ones that we’d been catching, with a couple in the 6 lb range.
Yesterday, my clients came from San Diago, Ca on a two week vacation touring in the Copper Country and Northern Wisconsin. We did a little bit of sightseeing by the Mendota Lighthouse, Bear Bluff, the old Smith Fisheries property and up the the mouth of the Montreal River, then dropped some lines to see if we could pick up anything near the mouth. No luck there.
After that we headed out a couple miles and dropped lines in 150 feet to the bottom where we quickly picked up a lake trout. Lost a couple right at the boat, one of which the lure hit me in the chin and stuck there. I quickly pulled it out and bled a little, but it was just a superficial hook puncture and soon clotted and quit bleeding.
We rocked and rolled around for a while before picking up a couple more and pulled the lines to go in with 4 trout, just enough for one each for the 4 of the kids on board. If not fore a couple seasick clients, we could have fished longer and found some more lakers.
Today, we fished with retired IRS man Ben in Lac La Belle for Small Mouth and Pike and had several bites, but only landed 3 fish. There were LOTS of bugs floating on the surface that the fish had gorged themselves on and were not very hungry.
Tomorrow, we pre-fish for a tourney in Chassell on Saturday, targetting walleye and Small Mouth Bass.
Brian Helminen
