Here's my buddy John D. with one we picked up casting spoons and jigs on Wednesday morning around 2am:




Here is a livewell shot after boating the first fish. The livewell is 14" x 34"




I think I need a bigger boat. lol


The Thursday night trip I wrote about a couple weeks ago went down like this:

Got on the highway around 3pm, with my buddy Jake towing my boat behind his new Grand Cherokee. Headed north on the tollway, 2 minutes after merging with traffic at 70mph, the 150qt. Igloo cooler flies out of the back of the boat and explodes on the highway after being hit by a box truck. We turned around at the next exit and cleaned the highway but nothing was salvageable.

Since my pair of Forschners were in there along with the necessary freezer bags and sharpening stones, a stop at Walmart and Gander Mountain was in order once we hit Kenosha...

$200 later, we are finally in Wisconsin and equipped as well as we were when we left 3 hours earlier.

We dropped the boat in and made it out to 95+ feet of water without incident. I set 6 rods out running various spoons, flasher/fly, and cut plug presentations and stuck with a NNE troll. From 6:30pm till 7:30 pm we boated a few small lake trout and one small king salmon all of which were released. As the sun began to set and the last sips of my beer were getting warm all hell broke loose.

First it was the 2 rods off the back of the boat running a couple Brad's cut plugs that fired and drags were singing. Jake and I played the fish to the back of the boat with ease, netted a pair of stocky low teen king salmon just in time to hear the braid Dipsey Diver rod explode into a smoking fast run that set the line counter from 95 to 325 in just a few seconds. I gave that rod to Jake since I planned on getting the other two rods back in the water fast.

As I was about to START figuring out what to grab first, BOTH outside planer rods get a deep bend, the planers bury themselves deep behind the boat and that wondrous sound of squealing drags fills the night air. At this point I'm spazzing out big time. Three rods hooked up, two fisherman, and all three are pulling like freight trains.

These planer rods have 8 (80 yards) and 5 (50 yards) colors of 18lb. leadcore line on them behind a Yellow Bird planer, so there is lots of line out to start, and plenty of backing to let them run. I let the two fish pull line as Jake's bruiser bull dogs his way to the back of the boat. The Dipsey rod is an extra heavy 7'6" equipped with a Daiwa Sealine and 80lb. braid. It runs a 124mm diver down to 50+ deep with about 95 feet of line out. Lots of drag on that diver disc so the heavy line is a must. My buddy Jake is a firefighter and in pretty good shape, but by the time he had this moose to the net he was beat. As I slid his 19lb. king into the net I had him set the Sealine in freespool and made him grab a planer rod... the 8 color. (haha)

Jake's 19lber:


I box Jake's fish and crank in a nice 11lb. steelhead on the other planer rod while Jake is noodle arming a fish that has decided it's going to put on a show for us. Leaping jumps behind the boat, clearing the water by 3, 4, 5 feet, somersaulting, spinning, just going ape-**** all the while STILL pulling out line. In the last minutes of twilight, nearly 30 minutes after the melee began the exhausted 6th fish was swept up into the boat. Six rods out, six fish in the boat, we're batting .1000 and the night is young!

Before I set rods and flip a U-turn to run back through our marks, we take inventory, rest a minute, exchange high fives, slam a cold one, and get a picture of the cooler.



We did run back through the hot zone 3 or 4 more times, only picking up 3 more fish, nothing huge, but good enough to fillet. I decided to end the troll around 12pm and head back to the harbor, but I had no idea what a mistake that was.

Back at the docks, we felt good about or catch, but were hanging on the edge of unconscious due to the the 98 degree heat, battle fatigue, and how late it was. The next sequence of events is a bit blurry, but I believe I was about to power my boat up onto the trailer, so I went to release the bowline from the dock cleat, and next thing I know I'm ass over dome in the damn water. It took a second to sink in... and when it did, I panicked. No PFD, no idea how deep the ramp is at the end of the dock, no idea if anyone saw me go in, I can't see **** it's pitch black underwater...

A couple seconds of floundering is all it took for Jake to make it out of the truck, down the dock, and superman diving chest first to grab my flailing arms and hoist me out of the water.

So... I'm wet. Phone got wet, slightly bruised ego, and I still need to load the boat. Then clean fish...

Then explain to the wife what happened...

Then drive 3 hours home in soggy drawers...

But you know what... totally worth it.