Blue Zone+Freinds/Kids+Derby= Great Weekend

[ckewley]

It was a rather late plan but Sleepsjigging (Bain) contacted a family friend who runs a boat to see if he was getting any salmon action lately. He had been doing OK the last little while so the plan started to form. A few people were asked but couldn't make it so Bain thought it would be cool to get his wife & two kids out for the day. Another workmate Valeri who we fish with quite a bit would also be making this trip, & he's bringing his son. So Saturday rolls around & we're off to St Catharines.

 

Plan was to try & agitate the stagger's into biting whatever we threw at them......didn't work out to well. Marked a ton but no takers so after trolling around for a bit Captain Ralph decided to run us out deep. It wasn't long into the blue zone when we had a first hook up, a respectable rainbow took the skunk off & Valeri's kid got his first taste of big water fishing

 

 

 

It was a little while before we got into another fish, long stretches of nothing but Blue. A buddy of mine was out in the zone last weekend & couldn't keep the bows off his lines not the case this weekend but we did manage a few. Bain's youngest was next to bat

 

 

Took the kid quite awhile to reel him in, the bow took it & ran something like 100 yards or so. Bain got the last fish of the day a nice bow almost 12lbs

 

 

We headed back in & even tried to get the lakers to bite, they weren't having any of that so the day came to a earlier than expected close. All worth it to see the kids landing their fish, perma smiles the rest of the day.

 

Now on Sunday I was invited to fish a derby out of Bronte harbor. The fishing association there has held derby's in the past but they were private, this marked the first in what will hopefully be a annual event for the public. There were some issues brought up by fisherman like they late blast off (7am) but I thought it was a nice little derby with friendly folks & it can only get better.

We launched out of fishermans pier & made our way to Bronte to register. It was a biggest fish wins & it could be either Salmon or Rainbow.

 

 

I heard there was close to 20 boats entered & at 7am it felt like there was a 100 boats. The blast off wasn't the craziest one I've seen but pretty darn close. We rocket out to our starting grounds, drop lines & troll. About 1/2 hour in a dipsy starts screaming, hell yes the mood in the boat was rocking. The chinny takes a good 3 runs & finally gets netted, not bad guestimates were around 17-18lbs.

 

 

We're pretty fired up now, drop the line and begin the long LONG day of nothing, absolutely NOTHING but trolling. The next 4.5 hours crawled by, we marked an entire count of 4 fish all day......beer is needed for days like today but that would have to wait. One of the guy's in the boat fished a derby out of Whitby yesterday & said they were stacked up out Bowmanville way, didn't make it any easier catching them though. Weigh in was at 12:30, a whopping total of 10 boats caught fish, big fish on the day was just over 20lbs, ours clocked in at just shy of 16lbs good enough for 4th (no prize money)

 

Our fish on the scale

 

1st place (stupid branch)

 

2nd place

3rd place

 

To close the day there was a raffle with quite a few prizes & some BBQ'd dead things to eat which is always welcome...oh & BEER. It's been a long couple of days with not much sleep & too much sun I'm beat

[mr blizzard]

Great report thanks for sharing

[manitoubass2]

Awesome!!!