Rotary derby '10 on Normandy

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Reelax
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Posts: 5730
Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2011 7:27 pm
Species: Salmon, steelhead, brown trout
Location: Fletcher, Vt

Rotary derby '10 on Normandy

Post by Reelax »

Fished the Rotary again this year with Captain Randy on Normandy. This year it would be just Randy and I as our 3rd team mate couldn't make it this weekend... We setup on the Broad Lake at 1st light...
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Started in 65 ft of water right on the bottom with Rapala J9's and J11's. It wasn't long until we had the 1st rigger go off.. Had the 1st nice fish around 6:30am and it was around 9lbs..
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Snapped a quick pic and let it go back to the bottom...


Had good action all morning, and the fish were running with good average size for us. By 7am We had the 1st doubles and one turned out to be over 8lbs.
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The captains was a long pretty one that had no lamprey marks on it at all..
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We moved around a little bit in morning, but stayed in generally the same area of the lake, working 60-90ft of water, banging bottom with 2 riggers, letting one cycle 5-10ft above bottom, and
The 4th pole lone lining 3 colors of lead with a cop car off the back...We had a 2nd set of doubles and were really close to triples before 10am...
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With 2 people, we were both very busy.
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Good thing Normandy has autopilot, or we would have had some issues keeping up with all the releases.... The riggers we were banging bottom with were pretty active and by noon we had over 20 lakers aboard, with 6 of them being above 7-8lbs...

As the sun baked down on us, the port rigger's ball got wedged on bottom and started to pull hard... As the gunwale started ripping off the boat with the rigger, looking for a swim, we hit the clutch on the cannon just in time to save the hardware. After cleaning up the mess and even getting the ball back we inspected the gunwale. Appears to have sprung it's mounts and will require some repair or replacement, before being used again to amount a rigger to. Normandy will fish wounded the rest of the derby. We quickly made up for the bad news with a really nice looking Laker....

Later in the day, after our number was over 30 fish, I set the hook on one of Randy's Ugly sticks a little too hard and snapped the BWD 8'3" rod in 2 on a 7lbish fish.. The good news was that I was able to land the fish by holding the top and bottom of the rod together, but the bad news is I had to make another order to Cabella's to replace the captain's pole.

We closed day one after 6pm and headed back in well cooked by the sun, after boating 40 lake trout, with many of them (15?) Being over 7lbs... The biggest so far was 10.2lbs
And with the bottom of the board already at 13+ we figured we had work to do over the Next two days..

The next day started a little wet...
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We began where we left the pod of big boys the day
Before... I think we worked hard for what we got Saturday, and it seemed there were more Smaller fish mixed in. I even tried a J13 Rapala for a while and caught a 6+ lb laker on It while retreiving it off the rigger... The colors that seemed to work for us were chartreuse, fire tiger, and blue and silver... Mid way through Saturday I pulled in this fine fish...
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He is one of the oldest lakers I have ever caught, judging his girth and beak... He is deeper than a 13+lber I caught last year, but is not as long... He weighed on the boat at 11lb 4oz, so was not even close to being something to weigh... We ended the 2nd day at 30 fish for the day, 70 lakers Total so far for the 2 days....



By the 3rd day we were pretty tired, and as soon as we set up we were pretty wet. It started Out rainy, and finished rainy. We tried 3 different locations, one of which included the coast
Guard searching all morning for some poor sole who jumped off a bridge and couldn't swim.. The action on day 3 was very slow... We ended up the day only boating 9 lake trout, ending

The derby with a total of 79 fish... All but one released alive!

I want to thank Captain Randy for the great time once again this year. This derby has some Great memories for us over the years and this year seemed no different... I appreciate his
Patience when the rigger I was banging with almost went over board and after I snapped one of his poles, he didn't even yell at me once!

Oh, the lampry Summary.. We killed 6, and saw probably 3 others... The fish looked much better this Year with many 3-4lb fish showing NO marks at all... 3 years ago we chopped up 15 lampry and every fish was gored recently... It is still getting better! (they all seem to be the same size now)

Good luck to all and I hope everyone's lines stay tight.

Looks like it will be Theresa and I fishing the LCI for salmon from REELAX.. Hopefully I can get the riggers mounted by then...
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