Opening day for trout in Quebec finally arrived and I was off to Magog with Dave for the day. I had high expectations for getting into some trout & salmon and planned on running fly rods and several of the recently tied, tandem streamers. With a beautiful sunny day ahead and temperatures reaching the mid 70’s, I thought the fish should be feeding near the surface for sure! Little to no wind was what we were faced with throughout the day and T-Shirts were being worn by afternoon! Most areas on the lake had water temps around 37 to 38 degrees and that was rather cool by comparison to last weekend’s high of 47 degrees. Different lakes with different altitudes will have a major part in determining when the ice leaves and Magog was only a few days gone. We trolled several areas all over the lake without any success, changing depths and flies as we went along. From deeper water to shallower bays, nay a touch! I was really beginning to wonder if we were ever going to hear the reel fire! In a last ditch effort, I even went to a tiny minnow bait on one of the rods that I do so well with on another lake, hoping to get bit. I continued looking for warmer water all throughout the troll and eventually found a bay that went almost 47 degrees in one area. Once again I was sure we were going to find them there, but was disappointed when we never had a hit. It was getting on in the afternoon and I thought I would just take a chance and run far back in a bay to see if I could find the warmest water anywhere and eventually stumbled onto 53 degrees. This area gave me the confidence to spend a little time looking around and finally, one of the reels fired. Dave was at last into something and we were pumped! Although it wasn’t really big, it was at least a fish and that was great! It hit the minnow bait and eventually came off when it neared the boat, but not before we both got a look at it. It didn’t take too long afterwards for another reel to go off and Dave was once again locked up. I had changed the fly to another minnow bait and was glad when we finally netted a nice rainbow. At last, the skunk was out of the boat! Eventually I trolled everywhere in this area just looking for water temp and any sign of life. I finally found it, but I was over 100 feet of water when another reel went off and a salmon took to the air. This one also made it to the net and joined his buddy in the livewell. One more salmon a little later, also over 100 feet of water and that was all she wrote. We had spent all day looking for fish and found some in the last 2 hours of the day. Too bad we hadn’t started here! All in all a pretty tough day, but by not giving up we were able to put a few in the boat. Tough season opener!

Well, it’s finally here! It’s niche season and the beating began today on Lake Champlain. The beating I’m referring to was on the fish and oh how we did just that. With my wife’s birthday only 1 day away, we decided to head to the lake to see if we could catch a few trout & salmon and have some fun. Neither of us realized just how much fun we were about to have as we slid the boat in and headed to our first spot. I’m not sure, but I think it was about 15 minutes into the troll when the first reel went off and we were locked up. While Christiane was bringing in the fish, another reel fired and I grabbed this one. I had a screamer and knew instantly that this was the real deal. I swapped rods when I saw that hers was a white bass and passed her the one with the salmon. After a short battle, I slid the net under the fish and we had the skunk out of the boat! Into the livewell it went and we were officially on our way! It didn’t take too long before other rods were firing and this was the way it was to be, all day long! I don’t think we went more than 10 or 15 minutes between bites at the worst and most of the time it was even less. At one point, it was hard to actually keep all of the lines in the water with so much action going on. Other boats saw this and decided to move in on us making my life difficult! I guess they just wanted to hook up and didn’t care how they did it, so my trolling pattern became almost impossible. I eventually had to leave the area I was catching just to be able to fish properly and soon started locking up once more. This was once again interrupted as some of the other boats saw the action and slid over to where we were catching. All I could do was suck it up, keep fishing and continue catching all around them! Fortunately for us but unfortunately for them, we were the only ones into fish and I’m sure they were wondering what we were doing that they weren’t. In the mix of salmon we caught there were also a couple of nice, bonus brown trout landed that went about 3.5 pounds apiece. In the almost 6 hours of fishing, we probably landed at least 25 fish with about 10 or 15 more either lost or just missed altogether. What a way to spend the first day on the water, just catching & releasing salmon all day long! Water temps reached 47 degrees and the air temps were in the upper 70’s with a light N/E wind.

Although it’s been too long since the last report, I have managed to wet a line here & there! The Steelhead fishing has been pretty good if you could dodge the daily weather changes. I did get snowed in once when 49 inches of the heavy stuff fell in a 24 hour period. Yes, I did say inches! In between steelhead, there have been a few walleye ice fishing trips that have helped me keep my sanity, but barely. Shovelling snow every other day has caused me to look foreword to the ice melt even more than usual this year. I hope to be able to get the boat back on the water for the season opener for trout & salmon at the end of April, but who knows if the lakes will still be frozen! I will also be fishing Memphremagog, Massawippi and a few other smaller lakes for trout & salmon as well and am taking bookings already. Having the right boat surely helps with the different styles of fishing that I am planning on doing this season. The 621 Ranger Multi Species rig is equipped for everything that I want to cover from early trout to late fall Walleye & Muskie. The bass fishing will not change as my priority, but now I will expand on the other styles and species of fishing as well. My bookings have already begun and there will surely be more to come when the weather finally warms. If anyone is interested in some great early season action, I suggest that you get in touch with me as soon as possible. As with past seasons, it’s first come, first serve! This boat can take a maximum of four people, plus myself, but I still prefer only three. It’s a safety factor and nothing else! Tight lines to all!

I was scheduled to fish with Andre & Jim today back on the same lake but had to rearrange the plans when Andre told me that Jim had been in a car accident on his way in. He had driven from New Jersey the night before and made it all the way past the Lacolle Border before a truck wiped his van out on the Canadian side. He didn’t want to waste the day, so he called someone to come and pick him up so that he could go and fish. With the cold temperatures and snow that fell overnight, it wasn’t going to be a great one. We all met in the east end and fished the St-Lawrence River for the remainder of the day. It rained a mist almost the entire time making it feel like we were fishing in the clouds! The bite was really tough as well with us only getting into some fish in the last 2 hours of the day. The fish were marking in all the places we tried, but for some reason wouldn’t eat. Somewhere around 2:00 in the afternoon when the moon rose, they decided to bite and we managed to salvage the day. This was definitely not one of the better days, in more ways than one!!

I was back out again today with Tim once more and decided to use another ramp due to yesterday’s incident with the ice. I was able to heat it up, melt all the ice and duct tape it so that it doesn’t get any worse in the next few weeks of fishing. We once again got a late start due to the overnight lows and hit the water around 11:30 AM. The fishing was a little slower today, but we still got them pretty good. The water temps were around the same, but there were literally no winds creating a smooth surface to fish. The bites were a little difficult to detect as the fish were once again just picking up the tubes and tight line was a necessity if you were to feel them at all. We moved around a lot picking a few fish in almost each area we fished, but no real big schools were found. We caught fish in as shallow as 3 feet and as deep as 25 feet today making the pattern tough to figure out! Tim managed to get a nice walleye of around 4 pounds and even had a northern over 10 pounds beside the boat before it broke the line. I don’t think there were as many bass caught today, but they were all pretty good size. Another short day on the water and it looks like the duct tape held out!!