A Split Multi Species Day

Busy day today with double, half day trips booked. I began with Adam & his family for sturgeon early and spent the first three hours trying to hook them up. After several moves due to those pesky Gobies, we finally had a take and Andy was handed the rod for the fight of his life. With a little guidance and coaching, he started to understand how to play the fish, but was still struggling due to its size. Adam was use to fly fishing for smaller trout and had never dealt with something this size before. To him, it was like trying to reel in a bus, going in the opposite direction! He literally had no control over this fish after about five minutes. At first, she remained close and under the boat but eventually went wild, twisting and rolling and began going away. The line counter reached almost 250 before I decided to unpin he anchor to help him out. Andy was already exhausted and chose to pass the rod to his father in law for a break. I never like chasing fish but thought that it was either tangled or somehow foul hooked, when nobody could gain line. About 15 minutes passed before we saw color and they were shocked! I don’t think they had realized just how big this fish was, but they knew now! I had him steer the fish towards the boat and was able to net her without any problem. I also had a confirmation as to why they  couldn’t reel the fish in as it was massive! The hook was perfectly positioned in the corner of the mouth but this fish was large! Not having dealt with anything of this size before, I don’t think they understood how to fight it properly as the fish controlled them. We set everything up for pics and now they really felt the weight. It took two of them to lift it up for the photos and even at that, they couldn’t hold it for long. I shot fast and we released it immediately, watching her go straight back down. There was no reason to set back up so I just packed everything in and headed for bass. Andy wanted to try them on a fly & I had brought a couple of rods for him. A Clouser pattern had him locked up on his first cast and battling a nice fish. He had never caught a smallie before and was amazed at how hard they fight! I would have loved to take some pics but decided to release it due to how badly hooked it was. It released perfectly! We stayed on smallies until close to noon with everyone hooking up and I headed back for the afternoon switch. They were thoroughly satisfied with their first experience, fishing the waters in Montreal and with any luck, will return for more.

Frank was with me for the afternoon and had a couple of friends along as well. They opted for walleye and we made a long run to a place that had been holding some good fish recently. Frank had been with me earlier this year, had a great day trolling up plenty of pike & eyes and was hoping to have another banner outing today. With a little instruction, they began catching fish quickly and it never let up! I refined the areas and also their techniques to increase the number of walleye caught. The entire time spent during the afternoon had plenty of action allowing me to harvest a few fish for the table. I allowed them to each keep a couple and released all the rest. Plenty of overs were also returned in the time we spent making this afternoon extremely productive. The 4 hours or so that we fished just flew by and before we knew it, the day was done. These guys were amazed at just how many fish they caught in a short period of time and left wanting more. Who know, with all this warm weather we’ve been having, they might just get back out again! Great fishing was had by everyone today!!