Left home around 4AM, met my cousin, and headed to Algonquin for a day trip (we considered camping but it was too last-minute to get everything organized). Quite an ambitious destination I chose for just a day trip, and with specks, you never know what mood they may be in, so basically we canoed and portaged a crap load just to find out if they were "on". Unloaded the canoe around 5:30AM, and started our trip in. Saw a nice bull moose in a misty marsh on the way in, velvety rack on him. Arrived at our destination lake and started fishing at 7:30.
I took my cousin in there once before, and we got skunked, so he was still a little doubtful about how good it could be. Thankfully, in less than 10 minutes, he got the first of the day....then another, and another fairly quickly. I was happy to see our trip starting to pay off, and then started wondering if I was gonna get any myself, or just be the 'guide' all day!
Soon after, I started getting some, and it was game on! Dark and cloudy, looking like it could downpour at any time, but the specks seemed ok with that. It wasn't until the clouds cleared out, that things started slowing down some. We released a lot of small trout, and kept the ones around 13-16 inches
(1 to 1.5 lbs approx.). By 10:30 we went to shore to clean 7 keepers. Went back out after that, caught a bunch more, and missed tons more. You'd grab your rod when they hit, set the hook, start reeling, and they'd be gone!! I can't believe how many got off or hit, that we couldn't hook. I think they were just swiping at our spoons and being a bit timid...I actually hooked a small one in the butt again...just shows that many times the 'tap-tap' on the rod tip is just fish swiping at it with their bodies, not necessarily striking with their mouth.
As a bonus, I hooked a beauty when we stopped to jig near a rocky point, where we'd seen a bunch of small specks chasing our spoons in 15 f.o.w. Thought I had a really nice brookie on, until we saw it...holy crap!...nice 5lb. Laker. That was good for a couple quick pics, and released.
So, after keeping our limit of 5 each, and releasing many others, not counting the ones that got off beside the canoe, we ended the day catching 19 specks each. Not a lot for size, but they made up for it in quantity.
Now that we'd trucked in there, and been rewarded, we still had one thing to do...get back out of the bush!...we left the lake at 6:00pm, and suffered through trails with mosquitoes thick as ever, deerflies
constantly circling and biting, and miles to go. Canoeing was fine, but in the bush...OH My Sweet Fu$*!
After loading the canoe and gear, climbing into the truck, which had about 50 mosquitos inside, was like a relief. Pretty much felt like PigPen from Peanuts, constantly swarmed!
Here's the old 'catch em in the butt' trick!
Algonquin Brookies, June 16
