Stu, Ian and Walter find Grimsby’s Rainbows never faulter, June 10, 2012

Stu had lined up a fishing trip for his brother Ian and stepfather Walter the previous weekend, but bad weather pushed the trip back a week to Sunday June 10th. We met at the dock at 6:00am, but Walt had an emergency visit to the local Tim Horton’s that pushed back our departure time to 6:30ish. After fishing on Friday with my dad and my son Aidan, I pointed the nose of the boat to the water we had found fish two days ago. We set up in 90 FOW and the lake was without a single ripple on the surface. Like a mirror reflecting the bright sun rising in the east, burning through the heavy haze. The haze, clear skies above and calm winds were clues that the late morning was going to be hot and sticky.

After setting all the lines the deepest downrigger set to troll 80 ft below the boat with a spoon colour named "Purple Thunder" by Northport Nailer, stirred up a bite astarted bouncing the rod, but when I got to the rod the fish was gone. There was minimal action for the first hour as we trolled the 100 – 140 FOW and continued to mark fish on the bottom, but few in the mid and upper water column.

Then the same rigger set to 80 ft starts bouncing again and this time I got to the rod and found the hooks stuck this time. Pass the rod to Walt and he managed this good sized Lake Trout (his personal best Lake Trout) that weighed 14.2 lbs.

Two wire divers, 107 diver was set on 1 ½ setting and out 210 ft with SpinDoctor and MC Rocket colour #24 with green dots and the other with a 124 Walker Deeper Diver on 2 setting out 190 ft with a SpinDoctor and No-see-um Strong Fly.

A short time after the first Lake Trout the one wire diver with a MC Rocket starts pulling out line. It was heavy- but Ian winched in his personal best Lake trout that measured 15 lbs on the scale. Great start for the guys.

In the 90-130 foot waters the bite was slow on shallow set lines (fishing closer to the surface), but we did manage a coho on the rigger down 50 ft and lost a rainbow on a 5 colour that hit while letting out the line and the Ripplin Redfin that it was pulling.

Stu catches another Lake Trout but smaller in the 8 lbs range on the wire diver.

It was time to start looking for more silver fish so I decided to troll North west out over deeper water looking contently for schools of alewife that seemed to have moved out of the area we found them to be on Friday. When we broke 200 feet of water the graph showed signs of small schools of bait in the upper part of the water column. Then fish started to show up in those same waters above 50 feet suspended in 200 + feet of water.

The rigger rod set with a free slider goes off and what looked like a nice coho came out of the water yards from the back of the boat and no sooner then we can gain our line back on the reel to begin the fight, the fish came off the hook. A short time later the braided diver rod is jerked hard by a very aggressive fish. So hard that the leader broke and we watched the fish go crazy on the surface jumping and rolling frantically with the spoon still in it’s mouth and no struggle to fight against a bent fishing rod.

It was time to rethink the spread of lures, and it wasn’t difficult to suggest that everything deep was a waste of time and it made sense to dial in on the rainbows and cohos that swam the top 50 feet of water. Both divers were set to run shallow on 3 settings and out 90 and 110, one rigger was down 50 feet but a free slider that was a White with pink dots Northport Nailer was finding the 25 ft water as it slid down into place. Three leadcore lines were set out to run the top 40 feet of water. 10, 7 and 5 were deployed with inline planerboards to run out to the side.

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Soon it was a fast pace of activity where the box was filled with the crew’s 10 fish limit (mix of cohos and rainbows) and enough great high flying rainbows and jumping cohos to keep in our memories for some time.

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Shane Thombs www.FINtasticSportfishing.com