Day 5, Thursday, 6/15/06

Thursday was our big day. This was the day we were going to go trolling for walleye. Not onle that, but we were being hosted by some very kind gents who were charter captains and tournament fishers. In fact, one of the guys had just come off a win in a walleye tournament up on Erie!

Trolling is a method of fishing where you basicly toss the lines out in the water at varying distances and depths and cruise along at 1-2 miles per hour until you catch something. This kind of fishing takes it's own kind of tackle and equipment like planer boards, Dipsy Divers, racks for the rods so you don't have to hold them, stronger and heavier weight line, etc. Here's a picture to give you an idea of how the lines are sent out. The "side liners" are the planer boards and the diving disk is the Dipsy Diver. You can use spoon lures, spinners, worm harnesses (like the mayfly rig but with 2-3 hooks and about 6 feet long), etc.

Now, I'll admit, I came into this excited but expecting to be bored. I used to go trolling for muskies with my dad and that involved us setting up the poles and Dad would run the trolling motor while I kicked back and took a nap. This kind of trolling was much more involved because we had 6 poles to work through (2 poles per person by regulation) and, unlike my Dad, our captain would make us set up our own lures. In between catches, we would chit chat and pick our captain's brain about stuff. Also, what kept this from being boring was that (sorry Dad) we actually were catching fish! We were out from 8AM to 4 PM and we came back in with our maximum of 18 fish (6 fish of 15"+/per person). And if you take a look at my picture, that's me with my big humongo walleye of 29". (If only I'd remember to weigh it!) Dude! It's half as long as me practically!

And boy is she delicious!

It was a fabulous day. Geoff and I both caught 29 inchers. Everyone else came home with some beautiful fish. If you go to the Stone Lab blog page, you can see a picture of our class with some of our fish. I ended up taking the evening off and sitting and crocheting on the dock and hitting the hay early for once. I was beat.

Man, whatta great day!