Well I know whats right, I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin me around
Ill stand my ground and I wont back down
Tom Petty
Drove to adolphustown to have a gander at the launch. I had heard lots of "reports" of everything being frozen, but after talking to the locals, (Thanks Superdad!) I was told everything was open.....and it was.
However, adolphustown was too shallow...it would have been possible in teh summer walking in the water, and pushing the boat off....but we didn't feel like it...especially with the ferry 2km down the road.
Fished out of the Ferry launch Thursday and Friday.
Incredibly strong winds....this time out of the West....better, at least.
Saturday I told the boys "sorry" but i'm not putting my boat and equipment through the rediculous temps.
Instead we screwed around on the ice, and Barry boozecan decided with half a spinning rod and 40lbs braid, he'd put on a cleo, and bust a hole in the ice with a steel shovel. Of course he caught a five lbs pickeral. Seriously.
Sunday was our snow day so to speak. It was digging out day. We first took a drive (without the boat) to see how the ramps were doing.....as you can see, not too good. The winds were evil, as shown on the pics of the reach....Could you imagine fishing in that? Not me.
Here's the Ferry Ramp, that we had been using Thursday and Friday. Definitely needed some serious shoveling to get her back in gear.
We spent Sunday night shoveling out the boat and parking lot, so I could fish on Monday, and they could leave....
We did the trip on Monday to all the ramps, shovels in hand, however, Sunday night the Glenora Ferry ramp froze and a bunch of floating ice had blown in, completely blocking any hopes of launching there....Oh well, off to Pryners we go. Evil ice everywhere....Well, it was too late in the day to tackle it, so we went back to the cottage....very deflated.
Tuesday we decided to head back to Prnyers to have another look at the launch. We spent four hours cleaning the ramp of all the ice chunks, floating ice, and salted the 50 yards or so from the ramp to the road.
Wednesday night, my father arrived for the last three days. The weather was looking up. We finally had lower winds, and the weather temps had risen to about minus five or six...balmy florida weather from what we had been experiencing.
With Dad in tow, we set out Thursday morning to Pryners, and had the boat in the water, and were fishing by noon. We had our first fish in the boat 10 minutes later.
Friday was just perfect temps. Minus 6 and zero K winds....I was lovin' it. So were the fish. Staying on the powerdive spread, we put more walleye in the boat. No monsters, but at least we were on the fish! Keiths shoal was our productive spot.
As the day ended, i was letting out a powerdive longline (no core) straight out the back, preparing to put the outside inline on it...around 150' back, i had a strong hit. Gave the rod to dad, and he started bringing it in....it felt strange. We were in 80' of water, but in very close access to shallow water on the shoal. The line was directly behind the boat, as it wasn't on a board yet, so I know it was running in 80' of water, and as i was letting the line out, and hadnt closed the bail; the lure hadn't dived down yet. Up came Dads highlight of his trip, a beauty pike.
We had conquored Quinte, Mother Nature, and even the piggie Pickeral. No major problems. No expensive breakages. NO fish on Reef Runners?