Happy New Year everyone. Up in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, we have had a very mild start to winter and virtually all of Lake Ontario is still ice free. Although the boat ramps have spent some days iced in, this week they broke up and cleared the way for us to venture out for a New Years Day Lake Trout beatdown. Jim and I met at the ramp at 945am and although the temperature was just below freezing, the ramp and bay was ice free. We dunked the 2020 Ranger 621 FS Pro and let the motor warm up while we got our floater suits on, safety is paramount when water temps are in the 30’s. After a 4-5 mile run out onto the lake we stopped to setup. Started the kicker, deployed the Ulterra and began to set out our 4 lines. On Lake Ontario in Canadian waters, we can run 2 lines per angler. We set out 2 planer boards on the outside, one with a 3 oz snap weight, 50 feet from the lure and then another 100 ft to the board. The other with the same setup except a 2 oz weight. As I was clipping the board on the one line a fish hit the spoon, unfortunately it came off as I was trying to get the rod in my hand, oh well good sign! On the inside we flat lined Jim’s beloved copper setups, one with 150 feet to the lure, the other 125 feet to the lure. We set our speed to be around 1.8 mph on the GPS and aimed to stay in the 50-70 fow range. We’re fishing in a boat on January 1st !
It didn’t take long to get things going, about 10 mins after setting lines both rods on the port side fired at literally the exact same time, game on! While fighting those fish a 3rd rod fired and we were in a triple header with 2 anglers ha-ha. Jim quickly netted his fish and grabbed the other rod and we successfully landed all 3. After 1 hour we had landed 8 Lakers, all in the 10-12lb range. This kept up, literally all day. The longest lull in action we had was probably 15-20 mins and almost every time we had a fish on, we would hit another or 2 more. We stayed in the same 2 mile stretch of water and made our passes back and forth for the next 5 hours. We finally decided we would pull lines and head in around 330pm but at 3pm we hit another triple header and since 3/4 of our spread was already pulled, we decided we’d had enough. This was by far the busiest day on the rods we have had. Over the 5 hrs of fishing, we successfully landed 31 lake trout and had a total of 38 bites. Other than one fish that was approx. 3-4 lbs, the rest were all 9-10lbs+ and the largest of the day on the scale was 18.5 although Jim landed one that we believe was 20+ but didn’t weigh it as it was in distress and we wanted to release it quickly.
We didn’t take many pics as most of the day was caught on Jim’s Go Pro’s and he will share on his You Tube page, simply search Jim Lyon. This was simply a terrific day to be out, not too cold, not too windy, no ice and a boat load of fish. All fish on the day were released and lived to be caught again! Hopefully this winter remains as it has been and we can continue to fish. If not, this was a trip to remember and the latest (or earliest) we have ever had the boat on the lake. Happy New Year!