We launched out of redgate as usual, to a really nice morning. Nice and warm, calm winds. A bunch of trailers were already there. But, also as usual at that launch, no lines, no waiting.
We made it out on the water and starting setting up about 7:00. We had talked about our plan the night before, basically look for salmon between the Boquet River, and Scotch Bonnet reef. Liam suggested that we try just south of where we started, as the fishing was pretty good there last week. Well, as soon as we came off plane, and the fishfinder started working again, There was the bait, there were the lakers, and maybe some suspended salmon too on the traditional sonar.
We set out a spread of Honeybees, a halloween looking Warrior, and a purple Challenger jointed stick bait on 4 colors of lead. All lures were being pulled through the water about 20-40 feet down. If you averaged our speed over ground all day, it was probably about 2.3 gps. But, on a tip from either Jim "Tamiron" or the Fish Hawk guys, I can't remember witch, we kept our speed at "2.0" Fish Hawk probe speed at the ball. 2.0 is just a reference number more than an actual mph speed for those who may not know. We picked 2.0 because we put the ball down until the transducer was reading the probe speed accurately, then put a lure in the water to look at what speed it had the best action. 2.0 looked good to us. At times, that was 1.9 gps speed over ground, and at others it was 2.7.
But that set up, it was time for breakfast.
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Eggs and hash, bagels and cream cheese. You know what's funny? All I said was, "You guys ready for some breakfast?" and they started setting up the grill, and cooking it, haha. I was going to do it, but, hey, who am I to call the shots.
Pretty sure it was Homewreaker and AmsilFishThinking (sorry I'm aware I butchered that screen name) I heard first on the radio. We talked to those guys a bit, and they told us they had the winning fish in the box. Our hash was still in the shape of the can it came out of in the frying pan. I'm not going to announce who won this year, but, let's just say, it wasn't us. We also talked to our good fishing buddies Dilly Worm and one of his girls. Always nice to hear the tiny voice "FISH ON!!" come over the radio tuned to 68. Heard that at least a couple of times.
we had our lures running like I have already mentioned, between 20-40' down. Temperature at 40' was about 41-42 degrees. The surface was about 65. But, the fish party we saw on the screen was down a good 60-80. We had highlighted 70-90' on the contour map, working off of what we had committed to memory reading what our friendly neighborhood LCU admin Reelax has been writing about. Liam saw the party down there and couldn't resist. He asked if we could drop the riggers down, and I said, "Sure, go ahead". Well, it was a party for sure, a Laker party.
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This guy took a swimbait. We don't run them much, but, when it's a derby, we'll drag the kitchen sink if we think it might catch a fish.
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As much as we love to watch the rods pop, and reel in fish, we knew that today, we were on a mission, and it this wasn't it. We were on a hunt for salmon.
So we did a few more passes with the lures up high, changing out a few things in the presentation, and when we didn't get any of those, we decided to head north to the Boquet. It must be similar conditions up there, right? similar river, similar area that the river empties into, just no boats. Well, yes, but we didn't even put a rod into the water. Sonar looked like an old time author's notebook with the worst case of writer's block ever, and you think cormorants are bad? We saw what looked like a penguin gulping down fish the water was so cold.
Back over to the Vermont side, and I'm pretty sure we saw Serenity Now trolling over there north of Sloop. Slowed down to spy on those guys a bit. No fish on the graph. Next stop, we spied on a couple other guys around the ferry dock. Same thing. Then Converse, then Thompsons, and through Town Farm Bay, nosing around what must have been most of the other guys in the DYP fleet. Figured they were either catching fish that weren't on the graph, or weren't catching fish. Our next stop was where the Homewreaker team apparently had success in the early morning. We trolled from there, all the way down through where we started in the morning, thinking some of those nice suspended arches were salmon.
Well, at least 1 was.
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It was a great opportunity to try out our new livewell setup. Big igloo cooler, aerator, and 2 frozen milk jugs. Put Mr. Salmon in there, and texted Greenhorn. Not a winner. So, back he went into the water. I tell you what too, that fish was full of energy after 20 minutes in the livewell. Really nice to see that. The plan was to change the water periodically as well, to try to keep the ammonia levels down too if he was in there a long time. I've heard that's important as well as temperature and aeration.
So, that fish came on a size 0 dipsey diver, 100' back, set on 2.5 to the side, running the O ring. which is supposedly 20 ish feet down, over 80' of water. Huh, where have we heard that before? Fish took a rainbow trout colored speedy shiner.
But, that was it for Salmon for us today. We headed over to the ramp at Converse to meet up with our friends that most of whom, we had never met in person before. The boys thought it was funny that everybody knew who they were. It was nice to see all of you guys, and your're just as nice and fun to hang out with in real life, as you are on here. We would have hung out longer and ate a few pounds of the food you guys had cooked, but, we were already pretty full. I'm not sure what we thought we were embarking on in the morning, but we had brought bagels and cream cheese, scrambled eggs, hash, gatorade, fruit pies, pepperoni and cheese, sliced oranges, coffee, sliced yellow peppers, water bottles, lemonade, vanilla coke, and some snacks in case we got hungry, (just in case). We also had family in town back home to go visit with.
It was nice seeing you all today, and great job putting this all together this year Greenhorn. The boys thanked me for taking them out to do that this morning last thing before bed, and I'm passing the thanks on to you, and all of the other great guys on LCU.
