GROUNDHOG’S DAY, AGAIN?
Trophy Pike and Trophy Trout
For the last three groups it’s been like the Groundhog’s Day film. With just a few name changes, the highlights of the past fifteen days have been close to carbon copies. Like the previous two groups, our Week 10 anglers had to endure some low-pressure systems, cancelled fly outs and a distinct absence of sunshine. Like the previous weeks, they also had some great fishing when things lined up. Again, there was just enough warm weather to turn the fishing on when things started to slow down. Just enough to give this group a season’s high total of 158 trophy fish, just over the totals of the prior two groups. The story again was pike and more pike.
Trophy Trout
The surprising storyline of this season has been the phenomena of our MIA lake trout. Typically, this is the heart of our lake trout “season”. Yet over the past three groups we have tallied only sixteen trophy lake trout, just a good single day for some year’s late July tallies. But of the seven trophy trout we got this week three were monsters. On her way to the 100+Club jacket, Julia Percell landed a fat 40 incher; Bob Masters landed a 42 and Eric Hall had the top trout of the week at 43 inches. Why the shortage of lakers? Well, anglers have theories about almost everything—solar/lunar tables, wind direction, water temperatures, how you hold your tongue in your mouth and, of course, bananas in the boat. For this season we’ll go with the highly erratic weather. These poor trout are totally confused about what depth they should be swimming in. By now they should all be in water at least 70 feet deep, but we have been catching trout on windy shorelines and even in shallow pike bays. The cold temperatures throughout this “summer” have allowed this undisciplined trout behavior. It’s the old “everywhere and nowhere”problem. We’ll give them one more week to figure out where they should be.
Trophy Pike
But the pike were exactly where they should be at this time of year—in the weeds, any weeds. Our guides slid their big nets under an impressive number of trophy pike, a 142 to be exact, a record high for this season. Big pike often come in bunches and that was certainly the case this week. When they were on, they were really on. Bob Tiegs and Art Wittern experienced that when they teamed up for five trophies in a single day as did Rebecca and Mark Graf; Ron Helm and Kevin Worthington landed a six-pack of big pike and Paula and Todd Lee had a crazy pike day, landing seven trophies with the top three at 45, 46 and 47 inches. That’s a day to remember. Kevin Denney also landed a 47. Pike at 44” were caught by several anglers: Ron Helm, Bob Tiegs, Art Wittern and Dick McCullough. There were nine trophy grayling including 18 inchers by Julie and Thomas Purcell. It was just enough big grayling to get Julia and Thomas their Trophy Triple hat along with Ava Hall and John Bruntz.
Mark Graf upped his 100+Club total to 108.5”, a big number that may be hard to beat this summer. But who knows? Mark has one more trip scheduled yet this year.
So, there is nothing wrong with carbon copies if the original is great. Lets just do it again for Week 11, but with a little more sunshine.
