For the 5th year in a row I took a small group of 6 students I teach from Athens District High School to the Edu-Cast High School Fishing Tournament near London. This is a shore fishing tournament where around 500 students are completing to place in the top 10, so they qualify to fish in the Edu-Cast Championship tournament on June 29th on Lake Erie out of Turkey Point.
On Thursday morning we piled into my suv and left school for the 500 km trip to London. Up early Friday morning we headed for the tournament the weather forecast was for nice sunny weather, so it would be a nice day outside regardless if anyone caught fish or not.
At the tournament 4 of my 6 students caught fish, 1 caught a tree (lol) and 1 was skunked. One of my students ended up placing 7th out of the approx. 500 students in the tournament to qualify for the Championship Tournament on June 29th on Lake Erie, the 4th time we have had a student qualify for the championship tournament in 5 years.
A big congrats to board member Icehunter who teaches at Holy Cross High School who also brought down a group of students to the tournament, one of his students placed 2nd in the tournament to qualify for the championship as well. Great job, Eastern Ontario was well represented.
After the tournament and keeping up with tradition, we travelled the back roads of Southwestern Ontario to Port Dover, to check out the commercial fishing boats and have a nice Lake Erie perch dinner. After dinner we made our way to Mississauga to spend the night and wait for word on where we were fishing out of on Saturday.
Saturday morning we were up early and left to hotel shortly after 4:30am to meet up with our fishing guide for the day at Bronte Marina. We were heading out salmon fishing with Greg from Fishing4Tails and Gavin from GetBit Sportfishing, the other tradition we have been doing for the past few years as part of our trip.
We met at Bronte and made out way out to the lake at 5:30 am. The weather looked good so even if the fish were not co-operative atleast it would be a nice day on the water.
The two boats set up off of Bronte running mixed spreads of spoons and flies off the riggers, dipsey divers and several different lead core set ups. We started catching mainly lake trout, a couple rainbows and a few shaker chinooks earlier in the morning, but eventually hit a few chinooks in the 10 to 15 pound range, which we were pleased with.
A couple small coho were added to the mix as well. The bite pretty much died around 11 am, we headed back in around 12:30pm, with a mixed bag of 23 fish between the 2 boats.
On the boat I was on most of our fish were caught on spoons on the leadcore lines, with 1 dipsey fish and 2 off the riggers.
An awesome time was had by all the students and a big thanks the Greg and Gavin for a great day on the water as usual.
We are already making our plans for our trip down to Turkey Point on June 28/29 for the Edu-Cast Championship tournament. One student will be fishing the tournament on June 29th, we will be bringing two other students with us for the ride. To add to the fun we will be heading out with Greg again on June 28th in search of some more Lake Ontario salmon before heading to Lake Erie.
Should be another great road trip.... the end of school for the year plus more Lake Ontario Salmon!! Can’t wait. Though I am taking a group of 6 different students carp fishing on the St. Lawrence River later this week, so that should be a blast as well.
JimW
Athens District High School Fishing
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