With much disappointment I canceled out on a trip with long-time client, screen printer, Rob, because of the weather forecast this morning. With small craft advisories in effect for Bete Grise and 3 to 5 foot waves, I opted out, rather than trying to fish.
Yesterday, we were headed out to Stannard Rock in 3 to 4 foot waves, pounding against them pretty hard at times. On a calm day, it’s only about an 80 minute ride, but after slowing down for the larger waves after 30 minutes we only made about 10 miles. At this point I was in fish-able waters and I stopped to ask a somewhat beaten up crew if they wanted to continue, or fish right there. I said I was perfectly ok with pounding it out to make our destination, but we were still 80 to 90 minutes away at the slower speed. They said we could fish here for a short time and rest from the pounding, then make a decision whether to continue or not.
We caught a small laker almost right away and a couple nicer ones shortly after that, and by this time Thrivent Officer Blain was chumming the fish. I then asked if we should continue to fish here or go out to the “Rock.” With everyone in agreement to fish here, we circled many times over the active “spot,” adding more lines as time permitted and ended up with a full cooler of coho salmon, lake trout and one pink salmon, a limit for the 3 twin cities crew.
We had at least a couple doubles and maybe even a triple at one time, lost a few fish, too. Canoe builder Jerry lost 3 in a row at one time, but he also landed our 10 pounder. Fish chummer, Blain seemed to enjoy the trip even though he was sick the whole time.
Our laker taker did well, as did my FinnAction Lure, fish grinch and the dodger/spin-n-glow shown on my previous post. The pink was caught on a planer board with a pink FinnAction Lure and the coho came in on a dipsy diver with spin-n-glow and a planer board with a watermelon silver streak.
Urho drove during the whole trolling operation, doing a good job crossing the “spot” time after time and maintaining a good trolling speed of 1.5 to 2 mph. For those experienced in driving a large boat in many different directions in big waves, you can understand how difficult it can be. Without his experience we could not have limited out for my 3-time customer, Mike.
Brian Helminen
