One of the perks about doing a regional fishing show is that I get to meet some great people when they come on as guests. Today was no exception as I hooked up with Saint Louis Blues goal tender Jake Allen. I guess you could say Jake has lived the dream of most Canadian kids who grew up with hockey. He started out playing organized hockey at six and everyone rotated positions and he ended up in the nets and found out he was pretty good at it. Fifteen years later he found himself inside the crease in the NHL. He told me that nervous would not even begin to describe how he felt in that first shift but by the second period he had settled down and went to work.
It was kind of like that on the water today. I had found the fish deep and went to a drop shot which was something he had never done before. After about fifteen minutes of trying to get the feel of it { I coached a little } he settled down and went to work on the smallies and did we ever catch them. We were fishing between 25 and 30 feet of water and I would see the fish on the HDS9 that I had mounted on the bow. It was a bit of a job to hold the boat on them in the wind but every time I got over a bunch we hammered them. This was pretty simple fishing with a good prercentage of the fish coming to the boat on a wacky rig Sticko and a nose hooked Jackall Cross Tail Shad. I never see anyone fishing deep when I hit this lake so these are very much unpressured fish.
We were using a simple half ounce walking sinker for the weight and a 3/0 Gami about fourteen inches up the line for the Sticko. Same weight but with a 2/0 Gami circle hook through the nose of the Cross Tail Shad. Both worked equally well so I stopped fishing the Jackall bait because I am very low on them and have a tournament on Saturday where they might get some use.
For a change of pace we tried a creek inlet that had the wind blowing into it. Jake switched over to a tube and I grabbed a little number three silver Blue Fox. We caught fish on both but the big fish of the day fell to a Blue Fox at right around 3.5lbs. That is a good fish on this particular lake with the bulk of the fish running from 1.5 to just over 2lbs. An unexpected bonus was hooking four Landlocked Salmon which is something I rarely catch.
We had an awesome day on the water with this incredible young man. He is no slouch with a stick in the nets and he is a pretty hot stick when he is fishing. It was a pleasure to spend the day with him
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