Can't believe another milestone achieved only a week after the laker. A 15lb King on the yak!!!
Saw an opportunity to take on lake O with this perfectly calm day. I expected to fail my goal and would have been ok with it as long as I marked some fish on the screen, but lady O decided to grace me with a fish.
Too excited to sleep, I woke up before 4am and arrived at Port credit by 5am. After getting coffee and some food, I rolled over to the newly revamped boat launch. Really nice touch to have a separate ramp for non-motorized crafts, although the design let a lot of slippery algae grow. I almost wiped out a couple of times just loading/unloading.
There was a stream of charter and private salmon boats leaving at first light, and I followed them out toward the depths.
It didn't take much time before I started seeing larger marks on screen. After experiencing the rest of the day, I'm not really sure how many were bass and how many were trout/salmon. I had one mark that I was sure was bass chase up to the boat, only to reveal a salmonid.
The smaller marks readily followed and even nibbled my swimbaits, however none would fully commit. This is something I still need to figure out. Perhaps even the small 1/4 jig head with 4"easy shiners were too big, but any smaller would have had a hard time getting to depth.
I think I was about 4km out in what I can only describe as a giant shallow bowl when I stopped to tease another couple of mid sided marks, fully expecting nothing to come out of it again.
As I jigged the sexy shad colored swimbait in front of the 2 marks, out of the corner of my view, a much bigger one shot into view like a homing missile locked onto the injured shad.
No sooner than I had registered what showed up on screen, did the rod slam downward as if I had hooked into what I could only describe as a freight train.
Actually remembering to do so, I set the hook with a couple of firm skyward pulls, and the fight was on. Reminiscent of the lakers last week, this torpedo knew not what stopping means. The first run went on for what felt like minutes, and the thought of being spooled crossed my mind. Fortunately it did eventually stop, but a quick scan with the transducer didn't show the fish on screen...
In a single run, this beast cleared the 100ft range on screen. It took a good number of cranks before I started seeing it in range again.
Unlike the lakers, this king showed no signs of wearing out, and went on run after run. My arms ached from holding back it's outbursts. Like the lakers though, it eventually settled at a depth, around 30-40ft this time, and just decided not to move. It took many a 'pull up, reel down's to finally bring it up, revealing a shiny chromer!
Unfortunately probably due to fighting it for too long, it went belly up in the net and the decision was made for me to take home this prize. Only 1 problem, I don't have a stringer or any way to store this thing. After talking to a buddy, I took his suggestion to make a stringer out of some pike leaders and heavy fluoro, and towed him around the rest of the day.
Only 1 fish hooked today, but I can't believe my mission was successful on the first try! I would love to try again at a different spot where there is a more distinct dropoff into 100+ft next time.
