Laker Fest

Mark Davis of Big Water Adventures had the area of Lake Ontario the lake trout were using and the general technique to use dialed in before ever putting down a line this morning, and it didn't take long for him to figure out the specific drift lines, depths and best baits to maximize the opportunity so it was never long between bites. I don't know how many lake trout we caught and released, but I know it was a lot, and I couldn't begin to guess how many it would have been if we hadn't been working on photos and hadn't stopped early to chase smallmouths around.

I actually came in early because I'd driven all night the night before to get here and had work I needed to wrap up. Mark took Brian Evans back out, and they went right back to catching lake trout like we had been.

Lake trout are fun fish for me to catch because they aren't fish I get to target most places that I fish and simply because they are strong fish that grow really big. Today's first laker also added one more fish to my 2015 species list!

6 Favorite Fish from 2014

Toward the end of the year I always like looking back at favorite fishing trips, days on the water and specific fish. For the moment, I'm going focus on specific fish and what made each a favorite. And I'll just go ahead and apologize now to any extra cool fish from this year that I'm not thinking about at the moment.

Northern Minnesota Tulibee - It was neither a trophy nor a kind of fish that most anglers even target. So why was it one of my favorites? Mostly, I suppose, because I'd never caught a tulibee, and being sort of a wannabe northern woodsman during the winter, I'm intrigued by all things ice. It also was a fun catch because I marked just inches beneath the ice when I was fishing near the bottom for bluegills, so I reeled up quickly and started jigging with a very short line. It hammered the bait and just about pulled the rod out of my hand.


Green Bay Smallmouth - We didn't have scales, so I can't assign an actual weight. I'm guessing high 5s, at least, though, and it may even have outweighed a 5-11 (my biggest weighed smallmouth) that I caught from Erie about a month later. This particular fish, which came from a small Green Bay tributary, was an extra prize and very satisfying because enduring winter weather made fishing unusual tough that week. I caught it on a Get Bit Baits Crawling Tube.

Lake Pactola Lake Trout - The cool thing abut the laker was how similar it was to another lake I caught a few years ago while ice fishing on the same lake. Both days I was fishing with Tyler French on days based out of Deadwood and we were jigging over deep points, and I caught both fish on minnow-tipped Lindy Watsit Grubs!

Niagara River Brown Trout - My biggest brown ever - right around 10 pounds - and I caught in the midst of catching a gazillion jumbo smallmouths on tubes at the mouth of the Niagara River with Capt. Frank Campbell. Again, it was a Get Bit Baits Crawling Tube that did the job. That day was actually one of my favorites from last year, but I suppose that's another story for another time.

El Salto Largemouth - It was my first trip to Angler's Inn at Mexico's Lake El Salto in about15 years, and the 9-2 largemouth I caught on the first full day of the trip might have been my biggest bass since last time I was there. I've caught a few big pond bass that I haven't weighed, so I'm not sure about that, but it was sure one of the biggest in quite a few years. It was a classic El Salto fish that hit a big Power Worm fished through flooded trees. My first trip to El Salto, by the way, yielded a 10 1/2, which remains the biggest bass I've ever weighed.

Red Lake Walleye -The best walleye from my most recent trip wasn't a genuine trophy by Minnesota walleye standards -- just a good quality fish. However, I caught it from the first sleeper ice house I've ever spent a night in, and I caught just moments after arriving. I probably hadn't been fishing two minutes when the fish hit, and I was surprised to bring up a thick-bodied walleye that landed right in the middle of the Red Lake slot and therefore went right back down into the hole almost as quickly as it came out.

2012 Species Count at 30

Although it's certainly possible that I'll slip out to a pond and catch another fish or two before the calender page turns, it seems very unlikely to me that I'll add any species to the catch list in the next six days. This year I decided to keep a tally of all the kinds of fish I caught, recording where I caught the first of any given species and the month of the catch. Unless I forgot to record something, it appears the final tally will be 30 species.

Looking at locations, eleven states and one other country (Costa Rica) added at least one "first" of a kind of fish this to this year's list. South Dakota and Arkansas added the most, with five a piece. The South Dakota additions came courtesy of an early-in-the-year, multi-species ice excursion. Among them was the laker pictured above, which was one of my favorite catches this year. Arkansas added to the list on a couple of different trips. Five specie came from the saltwater; the rest fresh.

The most surprising fish to me that is not on the is a spotted bass because I live in the heart of spotted bass country and fish in a lot of good spot waters. I cannot say for certain that I didn't catch any spots this year, but I cannot identify a specific one that I remember and therefore record.

Come Tuesday, I'll start the count anew.

Catch List to 13

Three days on the South Dakota ice allowed me to expand my 2012 Catch List by five species, bringing the tally for the year to 13. Four of the five were types of trout. (Well, a lake trout is technically, a char, I guess.) The other was a rock bass that was almost too small to count!

Here's the updated list in the order that each was added: blue catfish, black crappie, largemouth bass, yellow perch, walleye, northern pike, bluegill, hybrid, lake trout, rock bass, rainbow trout, cutbow trout, brown trout.

Waters in five states -- South Carolina, Georgia, North Dakota, Florida and South Dakota -- have contributed to this year's list. Next month's travel takes me to Costa Rica. I'll bet I'll add a few new species there!

Lake Trout Success

Day 1 on the Black Hills ice definitely goes in the books as a success. My first-ever South Dakota fish was a 10-pound lake trout that took about 20 minutes to land. It took a Lindy Whatsit Grub just off the bottom in 70 feet of water. We fished Lake Pactola, a spectacular mounted shouted lake, and landed about 15 lakers, plus one brown trout.

The day started with big breakfast burrito at the Howlin' Hawg Diner in snowy downtown Deadwood, which is just footsteps from the Branch House, where I stayed last night. After fishing, we tried to go see Mount Rushmore, but it was fogged in. We'll try again tomorrow afternoon if the skies are clear.

Two Tremendous Days on the Niagara

I'm not sure how many hundreds of pounds of fish were caught and released in Frank Campbell's boat yesterday and today, but I do know that when we were not running from spot to spot or stopped to take pictures, at least one of us was usually battling a fish. Add the unseasonably mild weather and Campbell's great company, and you just can't ask for much better "work days."

Top techniques today included pulling Lindy River Rockers on three-ways and Shadlings on flat lines, hopping Fuzz-E Grubs off the bottom and dragging minnows on Lindy Jigs and on three-way rigs with Lindy Beads in front of our hooks. Yesterday we combined Lindy Beads with eggs for steelhead.

The Lower Niagara has become one of my favorite fishing destinations in the nation, in large part due to the tremendous variety of quality fish that you can catch any given day. We caught steelhead, brown trout and lake trout, but any given fish that grabbed a lure could have turned out to have been a coho or king salmon or even a big smallmouth bass.

Adding appeal is the delightful riverside town of Lewiston, with its shops and restaurants all walking distance from the Riverside Motel. Town seemed nicer than ever this week because of the Christmas lights and the open-air family skating rink, which is run by the town and free.

I've only been out of town for about seven hours, and I'm already looking forward to my next visit to the Niagara River -- whenever that might turn out to be.

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.