Three days after this trip I was still getting text messages from Grant. “Did that really happen?”. “Were we dreaming?”. My hands, shoulders and back told me it really happened.
Our last day to harass the Lake Trout before season closed was one I will never forget. We narrowed our search, decided to only fish the prime time and minimize downtime. These three decisions paid off in spades.
You know it’s going to be a good day when this visits you topside on your first drop down…
This photo makes me laugh….I saw this scene at least a dozen times that day…
The fishin’ was so hot I couldn’t get through a phone call without being interrupted!
We really didn’t take a pile of pictures! It was pretty much a flick them off boatside kinda day unless they were gooduns.
Grant wanted to try his Ultralite….he’s nuts like that!
The next sequence was the high and the low of the day. My rod buckled and I could barely move this fish. “Good one.” After a 20 minute battle she came topside. What concerned me is I didn’t see any bubbles coming up as she “burped” her way up. Lakers can “burp” air to stabilize themselves on their way up through the water column. She hit the net and I knew she was a tank. My best this year.
We quickly had her right back in the water. My suspicions were correct. Her air bladder was extended. She’d swim down 3 or 4 feet and come back up, unable to depressurize. Grant and I were just sick about it. I decided as a last resort to send her down on my anchor line to see if that would help her. I clipped a culling tag on her, attached her to the anchor line and sent her down 50 feet. We gave her 10 minutes down there. It didn’t help. Elation to heartbreak in 30 minutes, she had to be kept.
We rationalized it to ourselves by talking about how many fish are kept out there every year and here we are feeling sick about keeping one. It was an old stocked fish that a friend of Grants will smoke.
We moved back to start fishing again and while it was all quiet in the boat my rod buckled again. Another good one….and with that big girl on board we grabbed her for what is likely going to be my favorite photo this year….
We landed 31 Lakers on the day. Grant was counting, I gave up. We likely lost another dozen by just being silly with them.
It was a day Grant and I will remember forever.
