Well, this past weekend was the first ever IDO Slammin’ Salmon GTG, and of course the fish gods decided to make it tough on us. From what I’ve heard though, it wouldn’t have been an IDO GTG without tough fishing, so it is what it is….. Just wanted to throw out a few more details for those who attended or are just interested.
I was paired up with Art Green and SalmonSteve for the weekend, and could not asked for a better crew. I had never met either of the guys before, but we had a great time and even caught a few fish. We fished out of Art’s 17′ SmokerCraft. A boat that a lot of you guys can probably associate with, as it is a very typically walleye\ multispecies boat close to what a lot of us probably run. It’s plenty big enough to handle three guys\ 9lines but perfect for inland fishing too. Anyways, here’s how the fishing went for us.
Saturday morning, we decided to run down South to where I had some good fishing Thursday night by myself. Got down there and got the whole 9 rod spread out and didn’t get a bite for the first hour.Decided to go back through the area anyways but from a completely different direction and that proved to be a good call. We ended up having around 15 bites down there and stuck around 10 of them. The were mostly smaller fish but had a couple decent ones and missed some good oportunities as well. Our bites came on all different setups and can’t say we really established any type of solid pattern.
Got back to the launch and upon conversing with others at the pot luck, found out that we had done better than most. I wasn’t very excited to go back and fish small fish again, but without having anything better to go off, we decided to go back there anyways in the afternoon. On our way out, spent a little time in shallow looking for browns after seeing that John Schultz had popped a 15 pounder in there in the morning. Gave it an hour in there and popped two small ones, but just wasn’t feeling it, so back out to salmon fishing we went. Got the salmon spread out with two hours til sundown and never got back on our fish from earlier. Water was all mixed up in there and I think the fish just left. Had a couple bites but overall the afternoon bite was miserable.
Fast forward to Sunday morning, and I had been thinking all night about where the fish were hiding. Art and I talked about it and figured the best bet was just go the opposite way of where we were the previous night. So, North we went…. While exiting the main gap, I started to go crazy. There was so much cold water in close we just had to try it. Looked over at Art and could tell he was thinking the same thing. Ended up dropping in a skinny water spread just off the pier head and set a course NE. First hour was quiet, too quiet, and just about the time I was about to say let’s pull the plug, we tripled up, clearing one whole side of boards off the boat. Steve got the first rod which ended up being a small king. As he was fighting that, middle board took off screaming and I saw an absolute pig jump 3 colors behind the board. Just as we were about to net Steve’s fish, the last board lurched back hard and i just cinched up the drag as we allready had our hands full. Got the first fish in the net and Art grabbed the last rod. Immidiatedly, he says “big fish, lots of weight”. So we’ve go two pigs on the same side of the boat on boards. Not a good thing actually. Long story short, arts fish got into mine and we ended up losing both… Tried going back through the waypoints a few more times after that, but nothing would go so we pulled the plug and headed deeper.
While going deeper, Art made the call to go with an all Flasher Fly program and I said, lets go with only one dipsy, one rigger and the rest all copper and lead. Turned out to be the right call and as we got into 80-100 fow we experienced some really solid fishing. Caught two nice four year olds, a beautiful raibow, a laker and missed a few in about two hours out deeper and we probably could’ve caught more but weather kicked up and we had to call it.
Overall, the fishing was tough this weekend, but we still caught fish and some good ones mixed in. Also, very promising to see a good FF bite for once as this year had been primarily spoons. A little long winded report, I know, but just wanted to let people know exactly what we did so that those who attended could compare it to what they did and maybe draw from that. Next couple weeks are historically “lock n load” for us down here, so it will be intersting to see what develops.
