May 26 to May 31, 2018 – Joe’s Christmas in What Felt Like July – Ontario Canada

Joe's pig, week made.

My dad and I kept a long tradition alive for another year by taking the long drive to Ontario for five days.  We barely made it, rolling into town on a wobbly trailer tire that eventually led to a tow on board a flatbed to a thankfully honest and efficient local Canadian mechanic, who in the end just replaced a blown hub and nothing more major like an axel (though still expensive even with an exchange rate in my dad’s favor), We did, however, manage to launch the boat and tie it to the dock (priorities, people, priorities).  Thank goodness it didn’t happen 20 minutes sooner when we were still on a highway moving over 100 kilometers per hour.  Not a great start, but after 20+ years of visiting the same lake, at least 30 for Joe, the years sort of melt into each other sometimes, and we forget the tough times through the lens of nostalgia.  While we have had some awesome years over the many years, the trend has been one of diminishing returns, at least on our favorite lake, which becomes more pressured and more developed every year.  For the last couple of trips we have found good fish by trailering the boat to another nearby lake, even staying on this nearby lake at least a couple times with young Kenny, but even this lake did not produce this year.  

A day and a half where we had numbers.

It was hot, too hot and too calm, actually.  A little breeze, not winds of 15 knots, mind you, always helps on a lake with clear water, not to mention shoals as prime foraging spots, but we had multiple days this past week that were over 80 degrees and dead calm.  The days with some breeze proved to be good days, and as you can see from the pic above, some big fish were caught, and at least one day was a strong numbers day, but the average was less than 2 pounds, and we could have driven a couple hours in PA and found that kind of fishing.  While it still had its moments, this tradition might have to give way for a new one a little shorter in duration, a little cheaper, and a lot closer to home, I am afraid!  It didn’t help, I’ll admit, that I had too much going on at home to detach truly and completely, try as I might to leave it on the dock.

One on top, and many of the shallow plug, but most deep on small plastics on the drop shot.

We arrived around 2 PM on Saturday to heat and sun, but we went out after dinner and gave it a shot.  Before that, I actually caught 3 decent bass (for home) and a few crappie, even a small pike, right from the dock, just messing around with what I had rigged on my half a dozen combos for the day.  Expectations were high, and we had some action that evening, but all the fish were small and had to be worked up with finesse plastics like drop shots and Senkos.  I had a lot of success all week drop shotting a bunch of samples from Fitt Premium Lures, Kenny’s new  business, so I took a lot of pics of fish with lures in their mouths, regardless of the size of said fish, just so I could report back and also stock up.  My dad did well a couple days on his go-to Gulp leeches on a drop shot rig.  His biggest fish, a smallmouth well over 5 pounds, took that rig and called for a net to land, perhaps even required a net to land on light tackle and a steady breeze pushing the boat along at a good clip.

Neither black squirrel nor full moon nor bluebird skies could turn the tide.

Sunday was a hot, calm one and a zero picture day, unless you count the one shot I took of an average smallmouth that ate an ottertail-looking Fitt lure.  My dad and I sort of measure the success of the day by how many times the camera comes out, and it would have come out exactly once this week if I was not conscious of the fact that I would have no pics for the week, just my dad on Tuesday afternoon holding a pig smallie, which would have made for a short blog post!  Fish were deeper, so I caught as many crappie in 8 to 10 feet of water as I did bass.  That kind of fishing is a lot of work, counting a drop shot down to almost 12 feet before getting hit by what may or may not be a bass and likely a small one at that!  We decided that Monday would be a day on the “big water,” the main basin of the lake whose water temperatures and biological clock are a few weeks behind the other, shallower end of the lake.  My trip is often made each year on the days we happen upon the pre-spawn feed along the sharply sloping banks of this basin.  This year, however, we were beyond pre-spawn and more into the period where the males had already made nests and were waiting for mates hanging offshore, interested in only one thing and that one thing was not food.

A few chunky ones were brought to hand on Monday, even a handful on a Fitt Wacky Creek Worm

A shallow running crankbait, just a cheap Bagley squarebill, run over these beds was the only consistent pattern, and we caught a lot of 2 to 3 pound males, most just nipping the back hooks.  Once in a while, one would pick up a tube or something dropped near the nests long enough to allow a good hookset and short battle.  As a result, Monday morning fishing was solid, but my bowels weren’t… I was taken short while targeting shorts and needed my dad to find the boat ramp and the port-a-pottie.  Good times!  This sort of thing has happened to me all of maybe three times in my life (one memorable time on a sand dune in Barnegat Bay with way too much boat traffic) and I have even written here boasting of my fisherman’s metabolism, but at least I made it and my dad was a good sport about pausing the fishing for a bit.  We tried the opposite bank after this detour, but found conditions similar to the shallower foot of the lake, so we returned to the effective pattern and made a good afternoon of it.   It was good enough, in fact, to decide to return on Tuesday with me running the boat to give Joe a break, but not before a short Monday evening trip where I did manage to catch a few, including one fish on a top water lure, and catch a full moon from the porch.

In addition to the aforementioned pig, my dad had his day on Tuesday from the back of the boat, sitting and patiently letting a weighted, wacky-rigged Senko or his drop shot leeches get deep enough to find some takers.  On the other hand, I had a heck of a time when my Monday pattern was a bust.  I got a few early on, and the wind was manageable, even welcomed if the fish were more active, but when I couldn’t get them to take a crankbait or a tube on a faster fall consistently, I was hard-pressed to run the boat and finesse fish effectively.  I think I needed an easy day of chunking and winding, and when I didn’t get it, I just lost my mojo.  At least my efforts running the boat allowed my dad to have a good day!  I know he has been in that position many times in the past.  I was happy to net, photograph, and revive his beauty of a bass too.  The fish was big, and if she wasn’t pre-spawn and tired after a long battle on light, drop-shot tackle, we would have rummaged for the scale.  While I am not a regular bass fisherman anymore, I have landed many big fish in the past and many more short stripers in the 22 to 24 inch range.  That was my estimate on this fish, probably 24 inches, which makes that a very heavy fish, I know, especially with a belly full of eggs and probably sunfish too.  It is more likely she was 20-something and 6 pounds, especially since we didn’t see many over 4 this week, but it was still one of the biggest we have taken from the lake and hopefully made my dad’s trip!

Another angle.

We got a call on Tuesday morning that the trailer would be ready, so we decided to end around 2 PM, go get the trailer, and pull the boat in order to fish the other favorite lake on Wednesday, our last full day of fishing.  After a nap, I used my phone’s Wi-Fi hot spot to catch up on grading and correspondences for my three courses in progress.  The coolest place in the cottage was the basement, where the television got three stations, including the riveting programming from Watertown, NY, so we spent the hottest part of the day lounging down there too, biding our time, hopeful that Wednesday on the second lake would be a good one.  Well, with me running the boat again, this time the conditions more favorable to finesse fishing, perhaps too favorable again, with no breeze and a hot sun, we caught a few fish but nothing worth a photo op.  I managed a handful of small but feisty smallmouth early, and my dad landed one largemouth over 3 pounds, but even the rock bass and crappie had lockjaw in the conditions that day.  We fished a few deep bluffs, thinking we could find some action deeper with some work, but the few fish we did connect with came from lure sacrificing casts to prime cover, the fish that were shallow likely snug to shade and security and barely willing to move twelve inches to grab a well-placed soft plastic.  All the hard work fishing deep produced a couple decent post-spawn largemouths. 

A swim and perhaps a farewell to the lake.

By 2 PM, we were ready to call it a trip and get an early start on Thursday’s drive home.  Instead, when we got back to camp, Joe took a long nap and I decided to give the boy something to laugh at me about.  I grabbed a towel and my camera and headed for the dock for a swim.  What a better way to end a hot day than a plunge in the lake at our deep water dockage?  I just sat afterwards and let the sun dry me off, perhaps taking my time giving the lake a farewell too.  We have had a lot of good fishing memories here, but it is time to pursue new ones in a new body of water, I am afraid.  Nostalgia has a power, but I am not sure it trumps a seven hour ride trailering a boat for mediocre fishing 3 out of the last 6 years or so.  I like the odds on the Juniata or the Susquehanna a lot better moving forward!