Coaxing Lakers

"If you see a fish, call me right away," Bernie Keefe said, as he showed Nathaniel and me how to work our jigs." The jig's movements showed up clearly on the Vexilar flasher, so any other substantial mark that showed up would be a fish.

When a laker did show up, it would have to be coaxed into biting, and showing it the wrong thing would cause the fish to bolt. When one of us spotted a fish, Keefe would come running and he would coach us through the process, which might involve slower or faster jigging motions, a couple of high lifts or other variations.

The first couple of fish I saw exited stage left before Keefe could even get to me, but he assured me those weren't the ones we wanted anyway. Then I happened to be watching him with my camera out when a fish showed up on his Vexilar, and I watched him vary the motions until he felt the tell-tale twitch, at which time he set the hook hard with a high lift and began reeling hard.

Keefe ended up landing that fish, which he estimated to be 32 inches long, and he coached me through the process when another showed up on my flasher. It turned out to be a smaller fish, but I managed to hook and land it. I had a couple of other lookers that didn't end up committing before I hooked a quality fish of my own, which as narrower than Keefe's but an inch or two longer, by his estimation.

The process of working the fish for several minutes, and watching it move down toward the bait and finally bite was really exciting - sort of the same sort of excitement as turkey hunters experience when they "work" a bird, I believe.

We kept our day short because of the coldest temperatures of the entire winter (40 below in the morning; high of 12 below), but we still managed to catch some nice fish, and I learned a tremendous amount about jigging for finicky lake trout.