We fished out of Converse today in search of the first spring salmon for my Mistress and encountered Reelax and crew at the launch and they were all business getting the boat ready for launch as opposed to my dilly dallying and as a result beat us and they hollered they were going to Town Farm as they headed to the ramp. We finally got the boat organized and launched ten minutes after Matt and decided to set lines right out of the gate because you never know, right? Well we soon learned it was barren of anything that would bite by the time we hit the ledges and the 20 mph N wind was pushing us along at 2.8 mph with the engine in neutral and there was a 2-3’ roll quartering into the shoreline and about then Matt sent me a pic of their first salmon and hollered on the radio to see where we were and suggested we join them in the sheltered bay. Now a smart person would pull lines and motor 1/2 mile around the corner into a nice calm bay but that made WAAAAAY to much sense so I decided to cross the abyss and take a poke at Whallon Bay and we pulled lines and went across in the ditch of solid four footers and kept telling each other it would be a LITTLE calmer once we got to the NY shoreline of Whallon and we were right, the waves were only 3’! We trolled north with the bow to the wind for half an hour and Reelax hailed us again on the radio to see where we were and it was at that point I realized maybe they missed us and we should join them back over on the VT side so we pulled lines and headed east. Twenty minutes later we were trolling on a nice calm 1’ chop along with Reelax, Ram Rod, Esad and two other boats and it was tropical!
There was a fair amount of schmeg in the water and we got fouled a few times before we caught our first salmon, a 17” specimen that had a 5” lamprey on it but we got the skunk off the boat and had the first spring salmon of ‘26. I spun around and hit the same line on the way back through and did the finest job of tangling our lines on the Otter Boat and longline off the transom you have ever seen! We are talking spun up tighter than Charlottes web get out the knife and start cutting! I haven’t gotten lines tangled like that since the last time!! We got things all sorted out and set back and we picked up another salmon, this one being much fatter and a bit longer and CLEAN! Now we figured we had them patterned and could possibly get some numbers over the rail and on the 4th pass my steering got spongy and upon investigating I found hydraulic oil in my splash well from a leaking fitting. Without any oil on the boat we decided to play it safe and make our way back to the launch at around 11:15.
We were running (2) Pins Minnows, a CI Blue Moon and a Silver/Blue Mooselook and the spoons took both fish.
A rough start to the spring season for the Mistress and it can only get better going forward (I think?
)Back out this Friday!
Pat
Trolling in Whallon
https://youtube.com/shorts/HQHHJbc-Z7s? ... POkBXlF3SO
