If every time you go out something goes wrong then why the hell do you keep going back? My friend Aaron asked while endlessly playing rounds of shuffle board at my brother’s graduation party. Realistically it was a good question, every time I try to venture out to the depths for trout and salmon something goes wrong between weather, and equipment that really throws off the delicate balance between heaven and earth rendering me fishless. So far I’ve been on the lake 4 times with the intention of chasing the big fish only once has been a quality outing. That one quality outing, where the weather was good and the equipment semi cooperated, was last Thursday. If you read my last post you will know that my grandfather who has been up visiting for a few days wanted to try and catch a big trout or salmon since he never had. I wanted just as badly to get out on the lake, and after the first three days of watching monster white caps churning the lake like a blender, the wind picked up lightly from the west rendering the lake to nearly glass. Trolling spoons steadily between 90 and 130 feet we were not marking any fish but still held hope. I was unsuccessfully playing with my bass rod trying to rig a dipsy diver and planner board. It ended in a rats nest, however, as I was tang lining with the planner board I heard the faint whine of one of the reels behind me. My head spun on a dime and sure enough the pole was unnaturally bent over. Grabbing the rod from the holder I felt the full weight of whatever took the flashy silver spoon. My eyes grew wide rushing my adrenaline with the prospects of a big fish. Something was wrong and I knew it right away. A few seconds later I saw the problem. Since I was using a different release than I usually used, the line had become wrapped around the wire. My eyes grew wide with fear, My grandfather grabbed the down rigger hand crank and before the words could get out of my mouth I saw the line disappear into the plastic wire guard and snap…………………. I wasn’t Mad, just shocked. Finally we’d hooked a decent fish only to lose it to our own error. Then, to add insult to injury; my grandfather began reeling up the down rigger only to have the wire fray and snap………………… The release itself I could have cared less about, the weights for these down riggers cost a fortune though. We trolled on the rest of the night to catch nothing just sitting in silence being mentally tortured at what fish it could have been.
Where Eagles Dare,PWL,
Jason
The success of seeing the rod doubled over and the indication of “fish on!” – that’s what keeps us coming back for more (regardless of what happens next). Good post!