The Big Chill

After a few days at home, I was back on the water again today for another shot at those hateful creatures. I arrived yesterday afternoon to 15 cm. of fresh snow from the storm on Tuesday and spent the first couple of hours cleaning off the boat and shoveling my way in. I don’t think I had used a shovel since January! Alain, Cindy, Jean Pierre & Nadia were joining me today and I really thought with all those lines in the water that the fish didn’t have a chance. Oh how wrong I was! I realized quite early that it was going to be a real challenge as the water temps had dropped almost 10 degrees since I was here last. Although we were in sunshine the temps never got above 60 degrees & with a 15 to 20 knot wind from the N/W, it felt even colder. We began with the fly lines and I hoped that with 4 rods going we would figure them out. In two hours of trolling, we had one drive bye & Nadia landed a salmon of just over 16 inches. Oh yeah, Cindy also landed a fish but it was a smallie of around 3 pounds on the deep line and quickly released. I figured that after 3 hours of painful trolling we would try something a little different and went to the riggers and boards. Jean Pierre got a hold of another salmon on the shallow board and unfortunately we had to release it as it was barely over 15 inches and too short. Things were really looking like the fish were going to win this one as one of the riggers got hit hard causing the rod to bounce several times. It didn’t release however as I still had the tension set for kings from last summer. All we had to show for this was a lost spoon and a little heartbreak! With only a couple of hours left we decided to go back to the fly rods and managed only one more hit as Alain landed a small, legal rainbow trout. Although we continued to troll a little longer, we only had another drive bye and called it a day. We managed to catch a few fish, but it wasn’t easy with the sudden drop in water temperature today. Hopefully with the warm weather in the forecast for this weekend, it will climb back to where it was a few days earlier making the fish a little more cooperative and easier to catch. I really don’t want to have to go for lakers once again! Salmon are the target and I’m sticking to it!!!