Rainy Day Salmon 7/2
Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2023 8:27 pm
I took the rowboat out Sunday for a rainy day of solo trolling. Surprised to see not a single trailer or vehicle at Ft Cassin at 8 AM, and hardly saw any other boats in 6 hours on the water around Town Farm Bay.
Didn't get off to the best start when the portable Lowrance sonar wouldn't turn on (it's fixed now, but not repairable in the rain and without the right tools). But in this day and age we can always rely on our cell phones for everything, so I went to plan B and used Navionics on the smartphone to navigate w/ the depth contours and avoided going too shallow - didn't snag a single lure on the lakebottom, so that was a success in itself
Went 5/5 with 2 lakers followed by 3 salmon which makes for a very good day of coldwater fishing by rowboat standards. I'd started trolling 2 lines of leadcore with 8 colors each based on the FishHawk TD finding 55 degrees 40 ft down, but fish #1 was a 9 lb laker so I went to 4 and 6 colors to target salmon. Another laker, maybe 5 lbs, came on 4 colors, then 15 minutes later the first salmon hit the moment the inline planer board was attached - took a minute to figure out why the board went under water right after it was clipped on the line ! The next salmon make a few huge leaps but stayed hooked. So far all fish came on a CI Split Rock while various lures on the other line did nothing. Finally I put on a CI SMG since the fish clearly preferred gold/copper Crazy Ivans, and a few minutes later salmon #3 was in the boat.
After 13 miles of rowing and a bit of reeling in, hands were starting to cramp trying to unhook the last fish, so it was time to head back and call it a good day. A couple soggy photos:
Didn't get off to the best start when the portable Lowrance sonar wouldn't turn on (it's fixed now, but not repairable in the rain and without the right tools). But in this day and age we can always rely on our cell phones for everything, so I went to plan B and used Navionics on the smartphone to navigate w/ the depth contours and avoided going too shallow - didn't snag a single lure on the lakebottom, so that was a success in itself
Went 5/5 with 2 lakers followed by 3 salmon which makes for a very good day of coldwater fishing by rowboat standards. I'd started trolling 2 lines of leadcore with 8 colors each based on the FishHawk TD finding 55 degrees 40 ft down, but fish #1 was a 9 lb laker so I went to 4 and 6 colors to target salmon. Another laker, maybe 5 lbs, came on 4 colors, then 15 minutes later the first salmon hit the moment the inline planer board was attached - took a minute to figure out why the board went under water right after it was clipped on the line ! The next salmon make a few huge leaps but stayed hooked. So far all fish came on a CI Split Rock while various lures on the other line did nothing. Finally I put on a CI SMG since the fish clearly preferred gold/copper Crazy Ivans, and a few minutes later salmon #3 was in the boat.
After 13 miles of rowing and a bit of reeling in, hands were starting to cramp trying to unhook the last fish, so it was time to head back and call it a good day. A couple soggy photos:
- 2.5 and 3-lb salmons
- 20230702_132632.jpg (159.3 KiB) Viewed 1834 times
- Salmon #3
- 20230702_131604_S3.jpg (120.68 KiB) Viewed 1834 times
