I hiked a bit over three miles Wednesday (after shoveling WET snow) and got SKUNKED. This morning I hiked in after my friend Rod (he's the early bird kind of angler) to one our favorite lakes. It's an easy hike in as it is all downhill. Rod was already on the water fishing by the time I got lakeside. It was 29F and raining. My hands were already cold and stiff. As I got my float tube ready and my fins on I saw Rod lift his rod and set on fish. He was a couple hundred yards down the lake from me but the bend in his rod was an indicator of the fishes size.
I had rebuilt my long leader the night before, I was rigged with my Seeger-Cator™ and a Seeger Perch Jig on one rod and a dragonfly nymph on my type-7. I kicked down the lake fishing the jig and didn't have any luck; I switched to the full sinker and didn't have any luck. I heard Rod chuckle and turned to see him fighting a trout so I kicked hard to see his fish:
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Rod and I were a bit taken with this oddly shaped FAT trout.
I changed flies on the full sink and knotted on an egg suckin' leech as that's what Rod had caught the fatty with. It got no love. I heard Rod chuckle again and noticed he'd switched rods and was fishing a floating line. I asked him "Bloodworm?" (he's known to some of us as Mr. Bloodworm) and he said yes. I clipped off my Seeger Perch Jig and knotted on a Fred Lake Bloodworm, set the Seeger-Cator™ at 5' (on a 20' leader? DA!). Lobbed the think out and a few minutes later down the indicator went.
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I changed up again to a red jig and caught two more fish before I was so cold I had to take a shore break.
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Here's what was catching fish
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I quit at noon. It was sprinkling, it was cold, my feet were numb, my hands were numb. We hiked out, back at our trucks we shared coffee from my thermos.