Insanity Strikes Again

It definitely showed signs of the weekend as boat traffic was once again at an all time high! Along with the boats were the non courteous fishermen and trolling in certain areas, was next to impossible. On the first pass through, I had to give way to someone who was almost running my lines over from behind. We’ll call him bubble boy as he was practically in the prop wash. I actually had to make a wide outside turn allowing him to pass through the area first and to make matters worse, they landed a tiny salmon. We were close enough to realize that the fish wasn’t legal but that didn’t seem to matter to them as into the cooler it went. I guess some people have different rules! We too hooked up almost immediately when I went full circle and finally came around to where we needed to be. Unfortunately, ours was also too short at just over 15 inches and back it went. With the cloud cover surrounding us I knew the fishing would be difficult and after a few passes without any results, we decided to relocate. Water temps were pretty low at the start but eventually warmed to just over 47 degrees by the afternoon. Light winds from the south had Warren & I relocating to another area in hopes of better fishing down the lake. It didn’t take long to realize that the fish were lethargic and casting jigs instead of trolling was what we were to be doing on this deep water shoal. I think it was on about the 5th cast that we hooked up and the move was looking pretty good. Unfortunately this was a perch and nothing to get excited about. A few bass were caught afterwards and I was contemplating another move when a nice lake trout of over 6 pounds inhaled the jig. For a laker, it fought pretty good on light tackle and into the livewell for later pics it went. We tried to cover this area a little more but soon had to leave when 3 other boats decided to move on in. You gotta love the weekend! After this, we bounced around plenty and changed up our methods often with fly rod trolling, planer boards, down riggers and a little more casting before we just decided to call it a day. Nothing was working and in the last area we decided to fish we were cut off once more as the boat coming at us decided to pull a “U Turn” in order to get ahead of us and troll where we were heading. Although it wasn’t a great day we still managed to get into many fish and some quality ones as well. Neither one of us wanted to take the lake so after a few pictures, we released it back to the lake. Catch & release still exists for some fishermen and although I’ll never begrudge someone from taking home a few fish, there are still rules to follow. I hope the person that kept the short salmon this morning finally gets what he deserves too!!