So this past weekend I took a couple of my students from Athens District High School on the second part of our school fishing trip to the Edu-cast High School Fishing Championship on Lake Erie. I had 2 students travelling with me to participate in the student bass tournament.
Here is a quick summary of our trip ..............
Saturday, June 23rd ............ Passed on fishing the bass openner
Left Almonte, picked up my students in Athens and hit the road, stayed the night in Woodstock.
Sunday, June 24th ............. Up early, quick stop at Tim Horton's and headed to Turkey Point on Lake Erie for the tournament. The tournament blast off was at 7:30pm and the weigh in was at 2:30pm. The tournament was a ProAm format with one student paired with a local bass angler in their boat, 5 fish limit, fishing as a team.
One of my students paired up with tournament organizer Darren Jacko.
The weather held out and at the weigh in everyone seemed like that had a good time, learnt some new fishing techniques and caught some fish. Both my students caught a bunch of smallmouth and largemouth, but could not find the big ones, weighing in 5 fish bags in the 11 to 12 pound range. The winning weight was a 18.5 pound bag of smallies!!
End of a great day!!
After the tournament we went for a Lake Erie perch dinner at Port Dover and headed for Toronto where we stayed the night.
Monday, June 25th ...... During our first school trip at the end of May our salmon charter was cancelled due to rain and high winds. So we had rescheduled for June 25th. The wind forecast was not looking great, but we decided to give it a try fishing the Toronto Islands area where we would be some what sheltered from the North winds.
We met our charter Greg Amiel (fishing4tails), who we have used for the past 3 years, at 5:30am at the marina and after a quick safety briefing, we were off. After a short ride and setting up our spread |(2 riggers, 2 wire dipseys, 1 copper and 1 lead core) with a mix of spoons, attractors and flies and meat, we were trolling by 5:45am. With the north wind blowing we didn't have high hopes for a banner day, but hoped to land a few before the winds picked up later in the day.
It didn't take long to get into a few fish and by 6:05am we had boated 3 small chinook salmon. As we continued trolling we hit our first double header, we ended up with 3 double headers by the end of the day.
For the first few hours we had steady action and the fish size improved, with several nice 20 plus pound chinook and a nice 10 pound steelhead.
A little slimy hitch hiker that was on one of my 25 pound chinook.
Both of my students out did me on big fish, his first time salmon fishing and a long battle ................... yields a beauty the just hits the 30 pound mark.
After about an hour with no action our 300 foot copper rod goes off the break the quiet, a minute or 2 later the leadcore fires!!!! doubleheader!!!! A couple minutes later off goes the wire dipsey rod!!! TRIPLEHEADER!!!!! After a few long battles ............... THREE KINGS !!!!
Not to be out done .... my other student finishes off the day with his PB just under 33 pounds.
All in all a great day on the water, we landed 17 chinook, 1 steelhead and lost 5 fish.
School fishing is done for another year, now its my time to fish!! Bass and salmon here we come.
Thanks for reading.
JimW
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