Made it to a friends house in Upstate NY for a week of fishing and hunting.
On Sunday 24 May, we woke up well before daybreak for Turkey Hunting.
We spent several hours in the blind trying to call in the birds...no luck.
Back to the house for some breakfast and headed to the reservoir for the fish.
We were later than normal arriving, most everybody was leaving because of the wind.
I say that because there are no motors allowed and only rowing can be challenging in the wind.
We headed out, even though the fishermen who were leaving said they weren't biting.
Side note about my friend and his Lake Trout fishing setup...
Typical 12' aluminum row boat with 2 sets of handmade (by him) oars.
Depth/Fish Finder to assist with finding the tricky buggers.
Professional sliding rowing seat that was adapted from a skulling rig to his set up.
2 rods with lead core line and we had it out about 270 feet to fish about 40-60 feet.
2 rods with heavy weights (like a downrigger set up) with several leaders at 15 foot intervals.
Those "Poor Man's Downrigger" is where we got all our fish and they were right on the bottom.
Only the bottom hooks picked up any fish.
Back to fishing...
We had bites as we were rowing out to his normal fishing area, fighting a 10mph wind.
He did the setup in the back of the boat while I started to get us in position.
We are seeing fish on the FF and they are all deep, about 5-10 feet from the bottom.
The bottom of this reservoir is around 140-165 near the middle.
We continue to row then BAM on the downrigger...a 4# Laker.
We row around and right near the same spot we got the first one...BAM a 5# Laker.
Now we are dialed in and in the next 2 hours we land 2 more, one of them a wicked fat 6.5# fish.
We were on the lake for about 5 hours total and the wind has died down to almost nothing.
Getting kinda hot and we are a little tired from a long day so we leave to process the fish.
A short drive to another stream for the picture and to clean & fillet the fish.
Back at the house they get vacuum sealed and tossed in the freezer.
When Mrs BeeMaa and I get home, they will get brined and smoked.
We give some of the fish away to friends and family as gifts.
Here's a picture of myself with the fish just before cleaning.
