Road Trip Kings

I took a long road trip with Norm to Lake Ontario for King Salmon today and we departed at midnight to be able to begin at first light. We decided that a two day trip would be the best way to go, due to the long drive & figured on fishing the following day till about noon. Our arrival was planned just perfect as we were on the water at first light and fishing before 6:00 A.M. The winds were out of the W/NW at less than 10 knots and were scheduled to diminish throughout the day even less. You don’t want to be on this lake in a smaller boat when it’s blowing hard! Waves were less than 2 feet at the start and that was just perfect for me to be able to troll without getting swamped. I had informed Norm of just how strong these fish were & instructed him on what he was in for, but I don’t think he expected what was about to happen. On the first line I put a magnum spoon down 60 feet and started to troll. I set the second line down 50 over 200 plus feet of water and ran a flasher & cut bait on the other rigger. I was about to put the third line in when the second rod started to bounce and I knew we were locked. Norm thought I was joking when I handed him the rod & said there was a fish on the end. That line hadn’t been in the water more than about 45 seconds when it fired and we were on our way. Although this fish wasn’t a real big one, it was the start of good things to come for the day & an indicator that I was on fish. After battling this thing for about 5 minutes or so, I slid the net under his first king of over 10 pounds. He couldn’t believe the power of this fish and was fibrillating at the thoughts of something bigger. After releasing the salmon, I began to re set the lines and was on the last one when the third, wire line rod started to go and line peeled from the reel. I had set it just minutes before and we were locked again. This fish however was substantially larger than the first and Norm was in his glory battling this beast. The line was screaming from the reel & just made it all that more enjoyable as he kept laughing throughout the entire battle. By the time the line counter reached about 350 feet or so, he was finally able to start to reel her back in and this time he spent closer to 15 minutes before I was able to get it in the net. I thought he was going to have a heart attack when he saw the size of this one! It weighed 18 pounds and after a few quick shots, was swimming back from where she had come from. We could have gone back home after that fish and he would have been happy, but I kept him there for plenty more punishment. This was to be one of those days that moat people just hear & dream about and Norm was actually living the dream! I would need to write a novel to explain everything in detail that happened throughout this day but the end result was 20 salmon landed out of a possible 20 fish on with the largest one weighing slightly over 24 pounds. Most of the fish ranged between 18 to 24 pounds and gave him amazing battles. We caught fish on a variety of spoons, flashers & flies as well as cut bait rigs. They were in anywhere from 100 to 240 feet down 30 to 90 and were hungry today. On average, we had a fish about every half hour and considering how long it took to set the lines & reel them in, there really wasn’t much down time. He just fought fish! I told Norm that the weather and fishing isn’t always like this and that we were going to stay out as long as we could in order to take advantage of this spectacular fishing. We fished till about 6:30 before we called it quits and headed back to the ramp to take out. I think Norm’s head is still spinning after having the day of his life on his very first outing. Can’t wait for tomorrow!!!