Even with as weather hardy a people as us Vermonters are, if you asked 10,000 of them to picture a typical day at the boat ramp, not one of them would have something like this pop into their heads.
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Unless of course you happen to come across a few guys called Matt, Thorny, and D.A..
I've been busy at my house RE-doing most of my kitchen, so, I didn't have a chance to retrieve the Country Angler from her winter berth the day before launch. So, Liam and I had to get up earlier than usual to try to make it to the ramp at a reasonable time to get some fishing in. Truck said it was about 9℉ when we headed out in the morning.
As we were rolling down Converse Bay Road a little before sunrise, and a little after the Reelax crew, I joked to Liam that showing up a little late today won't be bad, because those guys will have all of the work done by the time we get there. Well, that was just about what happened. I yelled down to the guys splashing their boat that I was sorry we didn't get there earlier to help clear the ramp, because they really did have all of the work done.
Pretty sure the response I got back was from the captain of the vessel, something along the lines of "No problem, Just Liam with you today? You'll be all set to launch by the time you get ready.". And it was true. Thanks guys, we really were going to help out.
Here's a picture of the water behind us as we were backing out. Where it is really calm, that is where the stuff we were floating in was actually in its solid state.
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After our usual systems and safety checks, we started heading out. I was getting all of the gear out on deck, as Liam piloted us out to open water. It was kind of funny to watch, he had to fight the wheel back and forth, and bump the throttle in and out of gear to keep the speed down, and the bow pointed the right way.
We headed over to Split Rock, and decided to fish the most unprotected water from the forecasted wind direction first, as it was supposed to kick up later on.
The sonar showed us the fish down there, but, like one of the boys aboard Reelax commented over the VHF, they were all just sitting there, nobody was streaking around.
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But, the fish were there at least. No hits all the way down the new York side, and back up to the point. We rounded the point, and passed these guys again.
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That's when we had our first bite of the day. A small laker.
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So that might look like an ordinary little fish, but, it happens to be the first ever fish caught in our first ever February trolling trip. Also, this fish crossed off the last month on the calendar that we hadn't yet caught a fish from a boat. Had to take a picture of it.
Immediately after reset, we caught another, then nothing again until after we crossed the building rollers over to Thompson's. We did see a few arches materialize out of nowhere right on our shallow rigger lines on the sonar, obviously checking out what we had to offer, but, not interested enough to bite.
Checked out our snack bag that Mama had packed next. Liam asked what the brown things were. Apparently, he had never had a Nutty Buddy. What? Had to give that to him.
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Radioed those other guys to see what they were up to over in Whallon, and I think D.A. reported that Matt was thinking about cooking some more chicken wings. Good idea, so we lit our grill too.
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Ended the day fairly early as the bite was pretty slow, and we had to be at Philo for 2:00 to hike and sled with the Blackbird Patrol from Troop 539.
Here's a picture Liam took of Thompson's, he thought the ice on the rocks looked pretty cool.
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Final count was 3 for 5 Lakers, 2 cheater fish, 1 rigger fish, 1 release with nobody home. So all fish that bit came from no deeper than 35 feet. We were running spoons and jointed challengers as deep as 90' fish hawk depth (about 110' of rigger line out on a 12 lb ball), between 1.8 and 2.6 mph. Water temperature was 36℉ give or take a few tenths depending on location and depth.
To the Reelax crew: Nice to share the water again with you. It was a chilly breezy February day to be trolling, but another good one, none the less.
