Another spring trip to Kabetogama in the books. The week went by WAY too fast. This year we had myself, my wife, my 18 month old son, my parents along for the whole week, and the in laws stopped up for two days as well. Although the weather wasn’t gorgeous the first couple days, it was far better than the start of our trip last year. Unfortunately this year I came down with a head cold the day before we left (made it all winter and then got this one), which I ended up fighting through the entire week. Fishing was a little slow at first, tried a couple ideas I though of over winter to try and put a few more eaters in the boat that didn’t pan out, then some spot checking of where we found them last spring failed to pan out. We were getting a walleye here and there, and of course pike, but by no means were we quenching my walleye thirst. Tuesday morning I watched Wyatt while the others went out, I strapped him into the backpack carrier and we went fishing off the dock, caught 2 pike, during the second one he fell alseep and was snoring all though my landing and releasing of the fish (I posted a pick earlier last week of him out cold in the carrier). Wednesday night I either hooked into a whitefish, or snagged a sturgeon (since its my story I’m going with the second one) jigging a blade bait in 28FOW. Whatever it was it had its way with my for a couple minutes and right when I thought it was ready to come up, poof, gone, line and lure still intact, I did mark a very large object on the bird right after. Since jigging wasn’t really panning out I decided to spend my last 30 minutes of daylight tossing on a taildancer and trolling a breakline around the island I was near. . . BAM BAM BAM. Just like that a 15″ sauger, mid twenties pike, 15-16″ smallmouth, 10″ eye and another 15″ish bass. Well, wish I’d have done that sooner. The next day brought much warmer temps and sunny conditions, gave casting and pitching up shallow a try again, but still no consistency, went back to trolling breaklines and had success again. Friday I started trolling in Tom Cod Bay, pulled up a couple 18-20″ eyes and a pike right away, but it died off, so in the afternoon I went back to trolling breaklines around islands and reefs. I finally found my ‘honey hole’ and pulled fish after fish off this one reef. The pictured fish came off that reef, just as I was preparing to spin around for another pass, wham, I knew right away this was a good one. When we could first see it coming in, mouth wide open, I thought I had a 30″er on, but she was just 25″, just under my PB mark (26). The very next pass in the same place I hooked up with another fish that felt just like this one at first, but it was just a upper 20″‘s pike. The downside of this bite was that it didn’t seem to matter what I did I was the only one getting bit, I tried swapping my lure over to my wife’s pole, swapping my pole, lure and all over to her (a little more involved for me to do as I’m a lefty and she is not), swapping positions in the boat, didn’t seem to matter, as soon as I passed off the ‘hot lure’ to her, that one went dead and I’d start hooking up with whatever lure I’d had on her pole. Not that I was complaining, but it was getting frustrating for her.
Two other side notes from this trip, if you don’t already have a tool kit in your boat, get one. I had just picked up a socket set for the boat, and it got used on this trip. I had hooked into a pike right at the boat and my wife reeled her bait quickly in ‘close’ to the boat and grabbed the net. While untangling the pike from the net the terrova ‘found’ her line and took bait, line and pole overboard. After quickly tossing out the anchor to keep us off the rocks I pulled up the terrova to find about 30 feet of line wrapped into it (fortunately the pole still attached). Having the socket set made quick work of pulling the prop off and removing the line.
Second note, I’m mostly preaching to the choir hear, but please everyone be aware of what you (and’or your kids) are doing when behind the wheel. My dad had a kid pull right out in front of him (never even looked) while driving home saturday, he avoided a broadside collision, but the brake line for his front brakes did not survive his evasive maneuvers. Fortunately we were not that far from a relative so he limped it to their house with only his rear brakes.
All in all it was a fun trip, some things going on that I don’t know when I will be able to return, but one thing is for sure, I will be back.
Once I can get the pictures off my wifes camera I may have a few more to post.
