Ice Out Kayak Fishing for Lake Trout

Ice-out on Round Valley Reservoir occurred last weekend. With cloud cover, a high pressure system, and light winds, it looked like a good day to target some early season lakers.

Targeting early season lake trout can be challenging. Unlike other times of season, most of the lake is the same temperature and the lakers are spread out over greater distances. As a result, an angler is as likely to find them in 10' as 100'. It is easier to target the lakers in the warmer months after lakes stratafy and produce a thermocline of cooler water preferable to lakers. This effectively shrinks the size of the lake and narrows the areas to look.

In the early spring, a brief, but frantic feeding period often occurs slightly after ice out. The melting ice makes the water super oxygenated and lake trout and salmon often go on a feeding binge. This can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Unfortunately, it looked like the ice out period had passed since it occurred approximately a week ago.

After the ice-out period, the cold water makes the lakers lethargic. So, the combination of lake trout being vastly spread out coupled with the lethargy caused by the cold water often makes for difficult fishing. Well, the water temperature was 34.5 degrees today and the bite was tough.

I launched at dawn and fished until noon and caught two lake trout and a holdover rainbow trout.

I found the trout in deep open water. The first laker hit in 65' and the last two fish hit in 75'. All trout were caught trolling Suttons on leadcore at a pace of approximately 1.4 mph. These fish were very deep, and the clicker on my leadcore read 250. I was surprised to find the rainbow so deep, but I've found brown trout swimming with the lakers in the past at Round Valley. Trout definitely associate more with the bottom at RV than other areas. The rainbow was bright silver like a salmon and definitely a holdover. It measured 16". My largest laker was 22", and the smaller laker was 16" and released.

I found a nice area with a deep water hump where the depth dropped from 90' to 75', and I was getting hits right on the ledge. This hump wasn't in the contour map and I marked it for future use with my GPS. Sometimes a subtle change in contour can congregate lake trout.

I didn't mark any fish during the outing except for one isolated thick school of trout moving through the flats in 20'. The fish were gone before I could jig them.

Tough weather day out there. Late morning rain coupled with a stiff wind made for cooler conditions. I was happy with the cloud cover and light chop for the fishing.

Next week or two will be more lakers. Salmon this month too.
 
 

Last Licks on Holdover Stripers

Fished the upper Housatonic River again today for holdover stripers. 

I met up with Hogy Pro Eric Harrisson and Gary Innes of KFA-NY. We launched around 8 am and fished until approximately 11 am. 

It was a much warmer day with very fast action on the stripers. We found a big school slightly upstream of the launch and stayed over them for the entire tide. We fished the last three hours of incoming until about slack tide. The school only moved slightly upstream over the three hours. 

The water temperature was 35 degrees. There were plenty of boats on the water but they were all heading downstream to fish the motherload heading towards the Long Island Sound. Some of the boats stopped  to look at the mark we were fishing and would quickly head down stream. 

We were fishing over a huge pile of stripers so you can only imagine the size of the school downstream. 

Tagged several stripers during this

trip.

Most of the fish were cookie-cutter schoolies in the 17" - 22" class. With the cold weather, this was great action. All fish caught on plastics. I tagged about 20 stripers on this trip for ALS.

It seems like the stripers are transitioning despite the cold weather. It appears that they are being pushed more by calendar than water temp. Other than the school we found, the remainder of the area we were fishing was barren. At the peak, there are almost always several big schools moving around there.With ice-out in NJ, this will be my last trip to the Housy.

Alas, I still believe it will be about three weeks until striped bass start to show around Long Island in good numbers. 

So, for at least the next two weeks, I plan on targeting lake trout and salmon in some lakes within driving range in New Jersey.

First Stripers of 2014

It has been a long time, but I figured I'd start up the blog again, and try to be more diligent in my postings. 

The last quarter of 2013 was a good one, and I had very good fall fishing for a variety of species. Hope to post some final pictures down the road of highlights from 2013. 

I hit the Housatonic River in CT on Sunday and caught my first stripers of the year.

For me, it was the first time I didn't catch a January striper in nine years and the latest I've caught a striper in that time period, which just reflects how brutal that this winter has been in terms of weather even for me on Long Island. Normally, I take a 4 week break from fishing from mid-January to mid-February, but this year it was exactly two months since I caught my last fish.

I got to the Housatonic at around 8 am to an empty parking lot and 29 degree air temps, with a stiff northwest wind cranking at 15 knots. With the lack of activity, I almost went home, but went out anyway since it was a long trip.

Well, there were plenty of stripers there and I caught my first within a half hour not far from the launch - the same biomass moved up and downstream in the area around the launch for the next two hours before I quit at 11:30 am. I think that there were two distinct schools moving about in the area and I caught quite a few in a limited amount of time.

It ended up being a pretty good bite in cold weather, but the wind and cold were brutal, and I was constantly battling the ice freezing on my guides while I was fishing. I was not all that unhappy to go back into the warm jeep.

Only two boats out there and no other kayaks - not even the die-hard Uncle Duke! The lack of fisherman surprised me, but the cold weather and incoming tide were likely factors.

Next weekend is going to be my last weekend of the season up there until probably mid-November. It is ice out in downstate NY and northern NJ and I plan on hitting a couple of nearby lake trout and landlocked salmon spots in Jersey over the next three weeks before the stripers start showing up in salt around Long Island. Best part of living on Long Island other than the beaches is the proximity to both good fishing spots in CT and NJ. 

Anyway, here is the picture of my first striper of the year: