Earlier this year I donated a gift certificate to the Fredericton Sports Investment auction for a free fishing trip. The winning bidder finally caught up to me last week and I had the pleasure of taking Mike, his son David and David’s best friend Nathan out for a fishing trip.
There were a lot of Chain Pickerel in the area along with some Smallies so I rigged Nathan and Mike with surface frogs to work around the grass, David got a number three Blue Fox and I took a big Skitter POP. We were all using Shimano Crucial 6’6” rods and 2500 Stradic reels. The frogs were rigged with Power Pro in 20lb test and the Blue Fox and Skitter Pop were rigged with 8lb Suffix Seige green mono.
The first fish hit Mike’s frog and it was a Smallmouth that instantly went airborne and that was the end of that story. There were assorted hits and misses for the next half hour that I presumed to be very small Pickerel. As the two young fellows started to catch fish it became readily apparent that they were in competition with each other and they were keeping score. Almost felt like I was back fishing a tournament.
The boys both caught their first ever Smallmouth and their first ever Chain Pickerel which was kind of neat. Mike and I got a kick out of watching them as they worked their butts off to out fish each other . There were lots of hookups but like always some didn’t make it to the boat. The score ended up at 20 to 17 when it was all done. The Blue Fox resulted in the biggest number of fish coming to the boat and both boys were using it by days end.
I had worked the boat, very carefully, into a rocky area of the lake when the sky got very dark and we could see a squall line coming down the lake. I grabbed the boys some rain jackets and we put the boat on a fast idle with Mike watching for rocks off the bow. This is a very bad spot and is normally trolling motor only but we were hustling with the first clap of thunder. We almost made it over the reef when the rain hit. We head in to shore to an old hunting camp to try and get some shelter but by the time I got the boat beached we were so wet that shelter from the rain wasn’t an issue an more. The lightening was another issue.
After about 15 minutes the rain lifted and Mike and I decided to cut the day short and to head for the ramp in case there was more rain moving in. I will not stay out on the water in a thunderstorm. It wasn’t a couple of minutes after we got the boat loaded that the skies opened up on us again and if nothing else my boat carpet got a good soaking.
Even though we cut it a bit short we all caught some fish and the guys had a good day. This type of trip is always a surprise because you never know who the guests are going to be. These three guys were great and I enjoyed the day on the water with them. I will be sure to do the donation again next year and see who I get.
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