Well the ice has been off for awhile and the open water laker fishing season is officially underway and I could not be more excited! Water temps are still very cold on the main lake while the bays are starting to warm up. While the pike and walleye are in this warmer water finishing up their spawn I spent my time out on the main lake chasing lake trout to start off my 2019 open water season.
I started off over on the Saskatchewan side trolling Garnett. The conditions couldn’t be more perfect as the lake was like glass. Really hoping to take advantage of these calm conditions I was really hoping to get on a jigging bite. While struggling to mark fish and find the bait I made my way farther east and started trolling until I found some promising looking structure on the sonar. We were consistently marking good numbers of fish in 75-90ft of water along with some quality bait scattered throughout the ledges. I first hooked up to a couple smaller scrappy trout on the anchovy rig and was it ever nice to have that feeling again out on the open water.
What happens next in the day was truly unbelievable…. I seen my rod twitch slowly and when I made my way toward the rod it had released of the down rigger clip creating slack line not the best situation. I immediately grabbed my rod reeled up and set the hook. My rod immediately bent over and as I reached back to take my motor out of gear the drag started to come off the reel and this fish wasn’t moving anywhere. At this point I knew I was hooked into a good fish. After a lengthy battle with multiple good runs and watching bubbles rise to the surface from him, I finally got to lay eyes on it for the first time. I was ecstatic to have caught such a magnificent fish to start my year. As I reached down to lift this fish into the boat the hook nearly fell out as it was just barely hooked into the corner of the mouth. After holding the fish up for the camera, I got it back in the water where it swam away almost immediately to be caught another day!
After hooking into a couple more trout I could hear something coming from the shore line. When I looked up to see what it was here was a cow moose coming out of the trees to get a drink from the lake. It was such a surreal moment as I just crept along beside it with my electric trolling motor as it made its way down the shoreline eating the buds off the trees and occasionally taking a drink from the lake. This went on for an hour or so before it disappeared back into the wilderness and I headed back out to deeper water to finish off my day of laker fishing.
The day went a little slower then I was hoping but once I got on the right pattern we were hooking fish very consistently. The key was the Rhys Davis Anchovy rig. That slow roll with fresh bait really seemed to trigger those trout. The second key was trolling in 80-90ft of water running the down rigger at 70ft with our presentation. These two items ended up putting 13 fish topside and truly a great start to the laker season. Feel free to check out the video below!
Hope to see you out there!
Cold Lake
May 24 2019