2nd lake trout trip

[CaptSpike]

Up at 3am. Meet Mark at 5 am. Head north 2 hrs and arrive just as the sun is rising. Unload and head out on frigid lake. Wishing I had brought my full face cover or even my snowmobile helmet. The ride out was a cold one for me. We drive down the lake two miles checking out a new spot. We stop several times to check ice thickness. Did I mention it was cold? It was. We select the location by GPS and my experience on the open water relating to land. We hit the edge perfect when sounding the first five holes drilled. Camera down showed us we were on a rock pile........Not good. We then hope to each of the other holes to find anything under 50 ft was a rock pile. The one hole we had at 50 was just on the edge of the rocks. Good spot we thought. We get ready to set up there and the Gator (Mark's) was dead. We left my nils in the truck so off Mark went to retrieve the nils and return the gator to the truck. Yup it was that cold. Killed Marks Nils batteries after 7 or 8 holes. We are thinking he needs new batteries. I chummed up the one hole and fished while he was gone. Nothing to show for it. When he returned we decided to dial in our location. We ended up between our 43' hole and the 51' hole. I believe it was 47' ft and we were parked between two clusters on a nice sand bottom. The only thing I didn't like was I saw some ledge rock and I never do good around ledge rock. We figured there was enough of the other type to cancel out the bad vibe. We got set up finally heat running and mark sets his chum pot down to chum his hole. As he sweeps upward to trigger the release he is left with a weightless line, LOL. Line snapped! I was all over him.

As he tried unsuccessfully to snag his pot I continued to fish for nothing. We hadn't seen a fish yet. After several failed attempts I told him to tie on one of my airplane jigs. After tying one on I took his rod and was working the jig trying to snag the chum pot. Wouldn't you know a lake trout comes in and crashes the Jig. Nice!

We ended up tying on a jiggin rap to snag the pot. No sooner did we get the pot up a large cusk came in. I still can't believe he didn't bite me. It was quite a while before we would see our next fish. He came in hot and Mark was yelling at me not to scare him off. I could see the fish wanted it fast and told Mark so. The fish turn on me as I ripped me jig upward. Then Mark snapped his jig off bottom and the fish crushed it! I told Mark he was welcome for the advise on jigging fast, lol. Then another lul. We thought about moving but under the weather conditions we balked. I'm usually a sit and wait kind of guy anyway. I have all that time invested in a spot with chumming up the area leaving and setting up somewhere else takes time and I always think the fish probably showed up where we left, lol. Anyway it was a fishy looking location and we held in there. ZZZZZZZZZZZ waiting ZZZZZZZZZZZZZwaiting. Finally we decided we'd leave at 1:15 if we didn't see any fish, it was 1:00 mat that point or so I was told. After a short time (10 minutes) I had had enough. I figured it was 1:10 and five minutes wouldn't matter at this point. Mark informed me the real time was 1:00, we decided to pull up and head out. As we wrapped up our lines Mark said we should shut the cameras off because he felt surely fish were going to show up as we were packing up. A glance down at the camera confirmed his suspicions. Nice laker eating our chum. I dropped down and did everything to catch this fish but he was having no of it. He kept picking up chunks and avoiding the one with my jig in it. After a while we realized this fish was not going to be caught, and then another showed up, and he was hot. Mark quickly re-rigged and dropped into the action. Yup Mark took the hit. Another nice laker landed. A couple more lakers showed up and Mark stuck another. Then a cusk came in and crushed my jig. All the while the same chum laker was feeding, lol. We left him there as we packed up and headed out somewhere between 2-2:30.

So it paid off to sit tight. The fish we got were thick so maybe another visit to this area another day might be worth a shot.

Sunday update:

I was going to head out local this morning but due to the high wind and the fact I only had till noon to fish (puppy duty) I decided it would be best to stay home. I have a set of lights to install in the portable so I'll try to get to that today.

Spike

[CaptSpike]

Here are the two videos I was talking about. Sorry they are short as I started recording too late. First is of some stick looking creature (only saw legs at the front so maybe something living inside a stick). Second is a small fish of some type that ends up burring itself into the silt, Cusk?

Spike

video1

video2

[leech~~]

Mudpuppy maybe.