Shakedown skunk 4/6

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keithm87
Posts: 641
Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2015 5:28 pm
Species: Trout and Salmon
Location: Central VT

Shakedown skunk 4/6

Post by keithm87 »

With the forecast looking a little snotty out on the broad lake we decided to try some more protected grounds for the shakedown. We headed out of Lewis Creek. The morning started off pretty crappy, with me unable to find my fishfinder at my house, and discovering it was not in the boat. Arrived at the launch around 8:15 a little later than planned due to my full on tear apart of the house looking for the FF. Had a crew of 4 ready to hit the water.
We arrived to a perfect launch, all to ourselves. loaded gear into the boat and in the process came across the fish finder that had apparently spent the ENTIRE winter on the floor of my truck under some ice fishing gear. Also got lucky and found the charger for my trolling motor remote. We launched at around 8:40 and headed out of the river. Having never been in the area we were all taken back by the shear amount of wildlife, thousands of ducks and geese everywhere. We got out into Town Farm and set gear. 2 big boards, and 2 riggers, 8 lines out total all 0-10 ft down. Water temps were 35.5 out front of the creek, but quickly dropped to 33.4.
In my infinite wisdom I sent my riggers down with lite balls (6lb) and never adjusted my chamberlains. Soon after setting the gear one of the riggers went nuts, it didnt release but the hole rigger bounced around and the wire went backwards. Because I am a little slow to realize things, I said "musta been an ice chunk". A little later the same thing happens, but the line releases. I go to set the hook but no-one home. When I brought the rigger up it was clearly released not tripped upwards. Checked the release tension and it was WAY too stiff. The fish gods had given us a shot and we blew it.
We trolled around Town Farm fighting little ice flows for a while before I decided that I wanted to head south. We trolled out of the bay and toward the otter creek mouth. There was a pretty large sheet of ice covering most of the area inside of diamond island (basically covering over the entire 50-70ft area outside of Porter bay. There was 200yds of open water to the east of the sheet and we trolled through that. We were marking a ton of fish,and the water temp was creeping up. we got to the mouth of the river and the temp was up to 38.5 as we went up the ridge right there into the shallows of fields bay, a leadcore fired. My buddy grabbed the line and started reeling. He made the rookie mistake of not working the fish to the middle, instead dragging it through our other lines. he wrapped a planer line, which I struggled to unwrap. After 5 minutes of messing with the line I finally was able to get it freed up and he still had the fish, about 10 seconds later the fish surfaces rolls and spits the hook. Looked like a laker from what I saw, but it was a ways back so not sure. when he reeled in the line the rest of the way we found it had tangled with 3 more lines during the fight. Swearing and other anger ensued before we got gear back out.
We decided to focus on that warm water, but the wind had other plans, the south wind shifted to a slight west wind and the giant sheet of ice started to move toward the area we had just passed through. Rather than pulling gear we trolled west across the lake to NY in hopes to find a clear path back to the north. ended up finding a spot where the ice was only about 5 feet wide of broken up chunks and with a little luck and a lot of dumb we were able to troll through it without pulling gear (the otter boats didnt really like it all that much, one actually dove under the ice pack and emerged on the other side)
We ended up trolling back in, all in all even with the skunk it was a good shakedown. We had 5 releases total, with one hookup. A lot of the day was dictated by the movement of the ice. We got some good videos of the otter boats colliding with ice sheets as it happened a half dozen times.


https://youtu.be/_pjlgdD7ED0
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BottomDollar
Posts: 601
Joined: Tue Sep 03, 2013 9:09 pm
Species: cold water
Location: Burlington

Re: Shakedown skunk 4/6

Post by BottomDollar »

Thanks for the launch report. Love the Merle soundtrack.
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Smelty
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:19 am
Species: Bass

Re: Shakedown skunk 4/6

Post by Smelty »

Of course he blames it on the guy trying to reel a damn fish in! What he fails to tell you is that he had the order of the lines configured wrong. Oh hey look my VERY FIRST post!
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fishy1
Posts: 3970
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2014 7:21 pm
Species: many species

Re: Shakedown skunk 4/6

Post by fishy1 »

great report and smelty your a true lcu member now keep on posting/
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C-Hawk
Posts: 1760
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2012 11:41 am
Species: salmon,lake trout

Re: Shakedown skunk 4/6

Post by C-Hawk »

We believe you smelty
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