After a fun outing with Dad on Friday and a busy day with the wife on Saturday, Sunday morning was designated as a 4:20 outing. By April 20th things are usually hoppin' on the lake....but this year definitely has been an "off" year so far. We had a few friends by last night which went far too late .... getting up at 4am was rough. My buddy was to be at my house at 4:15am. At 4:16 I was already considering going back to sleep but Andre showed up a minute later and were were off by 4:20am.
The plan was to fish Grimsby for Browns but after I missed the exit off the highway Plan B was quickly formulated...."lets just go to the next ramp" we planned, lol. We quickly launched and were fishing by 5am. Set out the simple four rod spread, two boards, two long lines, and mixed the spread with crystal minnows and spoonbill minnows. As the sun was rising the board with the crystal minnow started screaming...excellent way to start the morning.
Once we hookup with a king we always clear rods and fight the fish in neutral....makes for a fun fight but takes a little bit longer to get set back up. Once we were rockin' again the long line clown spoonbill minnow went next. I was on this one....I love the long line fish.
Next fish was a quick bow for Andre - about four pounds. We quickly released it without photo's in order to take full advantage of the King bite that was on.
By this time the pack infront was forming and the fish were getting scattered. Rather than loop deeper I looped in tighter and when the inside board stopped dead I thought my spoonbill minnow snagged bottom....until I saw a giant chrome shape leaping in and out of the water....awesome! This fish turned out to be my best battle of the year so far. A beauty.
It was 8:30am by the time we released the third king. The pack had spread as had the fish. We worked it for another hour, me secretly hoping for one last king. But it wasn't to be.
The winds from the East really started picking up...creating some deep swells....I normally can't handle east winds but I seemed to be ok....Andre on the other hand wasn't....the scotch from last night started to turn and soon he was chuming.
It was time for Plan B. Brown time. We changed up to the shallow spread and went in tight....just in time for the breakfast bell to ring. No sooner did we get the four lines out we had my first true triple header in many years....the inside board and both long lines all got hit at the exact same time.
Awesome!!
We got all three fish in, took a quick photo of each to memorialize the event, and quickly released them.
As we set back up we saw a bunch of small browns feeding off the surface....We kept our baits up high and proceeded to catch small browns on just about every pass until we got off the water.....nothing big but shows a healthy population of 1-3lbs browns...
A great way to close the weekend.