Loughborough Lakers

[akaShag]

I have not been on Loughborough Lake the last 2 winters, even though it is only half an hour from my home in Kingston.  The ice has been sketchy, and I am not religious enough to walk on water............

This winter we have good ice, probably on all of Loughborough, but certainly on one of the spots we fish on the south shore.  A buddy of mine has been out a few times, and caught some nice lakers, and he invited me to join him a couple days ago.  We had 8 or 9 inches of good ice, with maybe five inches of snow on top, but no slush.  We were in 65 FOW according to his graph.  I used to own a Vex, did not care for it too much and gave it away, then bought a Marcum LX7, which was a very nice unit but fairly heavy, and I rarely used it, so I gave that graph to a younger fellow who I figured would get more use out of it.  So even though it would have been useful to watch a graph whilst jigging for greys, I did not have one.  I watched my rod tip instead of a screen........

Going back quite a number of years, I would fish a large dead bait (especially smelts!) on bottom with one rig, and jig a white tube jig on my second rig.  Both produced lakers, and it varied by outing whether the fish preferred the meat on bottom or the imitation up higher.  Often enough we would see a streak coming up off bottom, reel the bait away, and WHAM! a laker would take the fleeing bait.  My buddy reported that white tubes were not getting any interest at all this winter.  SO>>>>>> I set up a line with a small Williams Whitefish in silver with a red slash on it and a live minnow, about a foot off bottom, and started jigging with a heavy Hopkins Shorty, silver with a dressed treble.  Up and down the water column, banging bottom etc etc, nothing.  I switched to a small gold Mister Champ, same thing, no hits.  OK maybe they want something different - and I tried a larger  Rapala Jigging Rap in electric blue with chrome belly, nada.  Then a medium sized Williams Whitefish, with the crinkly half gold/half silver finish.  No dice.  OK, I switched that up for a medium Buckshot in fire tiger colours with the fluorescent chartreuse back.  Nope.  In the meantime, my buddy was washing a bunch of his tackle, and the only interest he got was on a small black tube about a foot off bottom.  The fish would come up and look, maybe hang around for a minute or so, but no hits.  It was a cold day with a brisk wind, and not terribly comfortable, holes kept freezing over, etc etc, and I was thinking it might be time to throw in the towel.  So I looked again in my boxes of tackle - I am betting most ice anglers, like me, take a hundred or more lures out with them even though we will NEVER use some of them (like that 2 ounce Swedish Pimple we used in the late 80s for Quinte walleye 🙂)  Anyways, I spotted a Sutton West River spoon with the silver back and copper inside, and put it on my snap swivel.  I was letting it flutter slowly down to the bottom, when I had quite a vicious strike down maybe fifteen feet.

And the fight was on, yeehaw!  Because the fish had hit so close to the surface, I had it up to the hole fairly quickly.  All I could see was a very thick back and broad tail, and away it went, sounding for the bottom...

.....and at that moment, for reasons I cannot fathom, my fairly new, decent quality reel decided to loosen off the drag.  By several full revolutions of the dial, what the hell???  The laker was now really screaming to the bottom, while I feverishly tightened the drag back up.  Fortunately, it was going down not up, and did not get any slack!  Anyways, after several attempts to bring it up to the hole, I finally got it out onto the ice.  My lure was JUST hanging from its lower jaw.  Weighed on a digital scale, it was 12.64 pounds, and my best trout from Loughborough.  And yes, I KEPT it, to EAT!!!  The flesh was a beautiful orange, and it had a bunch of smelts in the mouth and belly.

That was our only fish.  We stayed until 1:00, with no more action.  But that one fish sure made my day!  🙂

Doug

[glen]

Great pic. Looks like a 20lber.  

[akaShag]

2 hours ago, glen said:

Looks like a 20lber.  

It FELT like that, but the digital scale said 12.64.

[Terry]

Yeah it looks like a 20lb head and a short 13lb body 

still nice fish 

[Ron]

Nice solid lamer! Man look how black she is.

[smitty55]

Right on Dougie, that's a dandy Grey. Those West Rivers are hard to find anymore. I bet that makes your winter.

Edited 4 hours ago by smitty55