The Call of Chrome

A few sights from my first trip to New York's storied Salmon River. Good times with great friends.

Hundreds of drifts, dozens of fly changes, few fish. 

Tools of the trade.

Many miles put on the wading boots.

Tommy slays the skunk with no one there to see it (Photo credit: Tommy Baranowski)

Fresh duck wrapped in bacon (Photo credit: Aaron Swanson)

Marveling a fine piece of water. 

Heavy D with some chrome just in from Lake Ontario

Until next time. 

Winter Is Coming

I'm usually not one to wish a current fishing season away for the next, but it's hard not to get pumped up about first ice right around the corner. Spending the past few weeks editing footage from a Lake George road trip last January certainly hasn't helped stem my excitement. Friends and I began working on this video as soon as we got home from the lake trout jigging binge, but days became weeks and the project eventually got shelved for a while; a long while as it turned out. Well, here we are 10 months later just ahead of the Polar Vortex about to rear its ugly head again. There are still a couple weeks of solid fall fishing to get in, but, whether you like it or not, winter is coming. 

Just Jigging

Editor's note: This is a guest post from my good friend Aaron Swanson about a recent trip to Lake George, NY. 

There was time when you could do it Connecticut. In the 1970’s, the DEP (now DEEP) captured a 30-pound brown trout in their trap nets from Washining Lake, a large (for Connecticut) deep-water lake that produced the stuff of legends.  When I was first introduced to ice fishing, it was a place of numbers with enough mystique to make one believe the chance still existed.  By the time I learned enough to start catching holdover browns in the kind of numbers it takes to potentially contact a giant, the herring population that sustained the fishery where I could jig up 50 fish a day, and mostly holdover fish, was crashing.  After a couple years of pounding our heads against the wall that the writing was on, we just stopped going.

This is not to say there aren’t other lakes in Connecticut where you can’t have a decent day jigging up trout.  But “decent” has become relative to current conditions we’ve been living with.  Warm, dry summers (though last summer was pretty wet), lake drawdowns meant to kill weeds that choke the docks and props of lakefront homeowners, and a host of other factors have led to what amount to lowered  expectations when targeting trout through the ice with a tiny rod.  There are large fish to be had, sure; beautiful mutants grown and stocked by DEEP. And there are lakes that still hold-over trout.  And there are the host of other species Yankee ice fisherman can chase.  Great.  But unless there’s a huge conspiracy to keep fantastic jigging action for trophy trout somewhere here in my home state hidden from me…well, as they say, the fishing ain’t what it used to be.

Enter: The Road Trip. As it turns out, a person, or a person and his fishing partners can jump in a car, cross the state line and experience holdover trout fishing “like the old days”  (that’s a joke but not a joke) with numbers and possibilities of unicorns—legit 20-pounders.  They might not be brown trout, but they are trout nonetheless, beautiful and more ancient. Specially adapted to probe the depths in search of cold, oxygenated water and food.  We can go jig for lakers!

Until a couple of years ago, the ingredients for this type of road trip hadn’t really started to mix and congeal in our minds.  Like I said, we had numbers and possibility right here in the Nutmeg State.  As our attention turned to targeting other, more prolific species through the ice like northern pike and walleye, the thought of driving to find the kind of action and conjecture we used to enjoy when staring at electronics and looking for marks on a screen started to sound much more appealing.  I missed it.  We missed it.  Understand, pike and walleye fishing are great and hold incredible potential to see a true monster fish for the region.  The thing is, it’s mostly done by setting tip-ups and forgetting about them in between sips of brown liquor, waiting for short flurries of chaos and excitement.  The urge to use the kind of continued focus it takes to drop a piece of metal tipped with some meat down 70, or 80 feet to waiting trout  finally started to grow into a necessary reality. 

Expectations are always high heading into a trip, no matter how long in duration or how far your travel may bring you.  A fishing trip that takes you away from home for a few nights or more does funny things to your brain.  The possibilities are always endless and YouTube only serves to inflate your expectations.  Watching unknown anglers, in say Quebec or on Lake Superior, haul up fish that would be records on the body of water you’re headed tend to stretch those limits of possibility even further.  Combine this anticipation with a fantastic inaugural trip that exceeded expectations the prior year and you’re flirting with THE. BEST. TRIP. EVER.

Luckily a contact, who none of us had ever met in person, yet has continually bestowed up to the minute information to us helped to temper our zenith-set sights to a more realistic level.  The bite was tough.  Guys were landing say three for every five hooked, or four for six, seven for seven.  You had to work.  Ok; who doesn’t love a good challenge, especially before you even show up and strap on your waterproof bibs? This was certainly a contrast to last year’s excursion to the same body when 50 fish days weren’t out of the question, but how tough could it be?  With the car packed the night before, tailgate sagging toward the ground, we got a couple of shitty hours of shut eye and were off to jig up some lakers; or at least go down trying.

We hit the bait shop by 7am, right on schedule.  We loaded up on small minnows to represent the smelts that make up one of the most prevalent bait sources our intended quarry relies on as well as some larger baits, you know, for “the one”… or something like that.  The procurement of a few jigs and other toys not so readily sold closer to home saw us out the door and doing our best clown car impression unpacking the storage unit’s worth of crap out of my tailgate at the southernmost point of the 32 mile long lake.

The mile-plus walk to the “numbers” we’d been given was exhilarating.  Sweaty, but exhilarating.  Funny thing about the “numbers” was that we essentially followed a foot path that turned out to be the tracks of our contact from the day before.  Some old fashioned sleuthing right there. Excitement and anticipation culminated with disappointing first drops. The screens were mostly blank save for the lines representing our jigs bouncing up and down in 80-plus feet of water.  The reports we true.  Despite the best tricks our sleeves could muster we had a whopping total of two fish on the ice and two missed hits by noon.  Thankfully, the guy in the group who was making his first trip of the season was the lucky lander of those two, respectable fish.  While everyone was there to catch trout, the big numbers seen during the previous year’s foray didn’t seem likely to materialize anytime soon – at least where we were.  

The good news was that the sun was still shining and we had the better part of a half day ahead.  Our attempt to pack ”light” motivated us to take off on foot and start covering frozen water to try and look for fish that would be more willing to attack the white piece of metal so highly regarded by the local lake trout whisperers. 

Nothing, I mean, absolutely nothing.  Having walked the better part of three and a half miles without observing another interested mark the proverbial “plan B” started look better than defining insanity by hoping something might finally try to attack one of our lures.  Only problem was, the details of plan B didn’t quite exist, other than the realization of “this isn’t working.”  Then, lady luck intervened and brought details of some potential next steps into sharp focus.  Another angler within earshot seemed to be doing a little better than us, but not by much.  As we continued to listen to him banter with buddies, he stopped short to take a phone call.  The voice on the other end of the line, now on speaker phone, described a wholly different scene than the one we were part of. The spot, named in detail, gave up 20-plus fish to 26-inches to the lucky, unseen angler.  We made sideways glances at each other, eyes widened as if trying to conceal our giddiness at this good fortune.  At the call’s conclusion the recipient stood up and announced to his partners “Welp boys, change in plans.”  Change in plans indeed!

Instantly renewed with confidence and energy, we made the long trek back to the car and re-arranged the copious amounts of gear that did not catch us fish.  We were off to the spot, thankfully named without shame by our unknown benefactor.  We called our contact during our  eight or nine mile drive north to the promised land and confirmed not only the spot we were headed to, but that contacts in his lake trout circle were there and, indeed, bailing fish! Our hopes were restored as we scouted potential access areas and found, oddly enough, anglers departing the ice who were willing to talk honestly about the day’s action. For three tight-lipped fish seekers and sometimes surfcasters from the Constitution State, this was not normal protocol.  Back home, our smallish bodies of water and smaller productive areas they hold are closely guarded and competed for in the freezing pre-dawn hours.  And here were guys telling us exactly where to walk to, how many fish they caught and what they were caught on.  I suppose the mere size of a lake like George, multiple access points to productive water, and the fact that, as far as I can tell, the bottom is paved with fish, makes information flow a bit more easily in the Adirondacks. 

JonA.  That’s the only way I knew him, his internet handle.  This guy, for some reason, decided to open the door to the kind of fishing we were craving in the Empire State.  Imagine that, someone I’d never even met or talked to on the phone invites up one of the group he’d been corresponding with for years (the subject of previous blog posts here) gave us the keys to making the three hour drive immediately worthwhile by severely shortening our learning curve.  Thanks man, credit where it’s due. 

JonA became Jon the real person early the next morning in a pitch black parking lot about a third of the way up the western shore of the lake.  Our presence combined with good reports caused him to break his usual routine of avoiding weekends in favor of less crowded weekdays.  Our previous day’s speculation as to how to access the deep water out in front of some islands was for naught as he followed some of his regular contacts out to “the spot”.  The cool part about this spot, and likely why anglers in the region are so forthcoming with news and information, is that there is plenty of room for all along the tightly grouped contour lines of the lakes depths. We set up shop and got ready to scratch the old itch.  Numbers on the jigger!  And we were on our way, between the four of us we managed to put a quick pick of fish on the ice, none huge, but marks that would follow your jig off bottom and bend your rod during its ascent through the water column.  There were smiles all around, a few high fives and maybe even a couple of pictures snapped.  And then, the bite shut off.

It wasn’t for lack of effort.   Between all of us we threw the old kitchen sink at the fish we saw.  But most of the day went like this: a mark appears on your screen, moves toward your offering, you move it in anticipation, he’s following, (yes! keep coming!).  The mark stops, you drop down with it, drop below it and raise it back up.  The mark follows again, but only half as far, maybe five feet off bottom this time.  You drop back down and try again.  The mark disappears.  Repeat. At least those fish gave you hope.  The ones that would appear a foot or two off bottom and never move, those are the one’s I’d like to yell at if it were practical to stick my head through an eight inch hole in the ice.  “Move you sonofabitch!” 

Of small consolation was that Jon’s repeated phone calls to other anglers, huddled in blue portable Clam ice shacks strewn across our field of view weren’t doing a whole lot better.  Even the best guys who fish multiple days a week struggled to put up double digit numbers. As the sky started to glow pink through the clouds dropping snow on our stationary hut, the realization that reliving the “glory days” on this trip was sliding further out of reach.  If we were to have any success, it would be during our abbreviated window the following morning.

Still though, there were shots and beers to order at another local bar; laughs to have with new friends and pretty bartenders to sneakily stare at (I’m sure it wasn’t sneaky by the time we left).  Once that was accomplished we could get back to the business of meeting Jon, again at an ungodly hour, in nearly the same parking spaces we had pulled into nearly 24 hours earlier.  A front was coming.  The second of what would turn out to be three dreaded “polar vortex’s (should that be vortices? Thanks a lot cable news) was due to move into the region and we pontificated on the mile walk back out to the spot as to what that might mean for the fishing.  For all our faults it seems to me the one shining commonality among anglers is the ability to hope things will get better.  To believe that “tomorrow is the day we’ll get ‘em good!”

Well, that morning was the morning we “got ‘em good”.  The old days.  Fish shooting up off bottom to grab your jig and struggle during their entire journey, up 80 feet until their beautiful bony faces popped into your hole.  One after another, hoots and hollers rang out from the randomly spaced group, barely a minute passing without a hook up or groan of a missed fish.  There is something about having success on a rod barely three feet long, especially when your quarry all tape out in the range of two thirds of its length.  Were these fish huge by lake trout standards? Absolutely not.  Was it a blast to hook up one after another and gather round the hole, taking pictures and shooting video to preserve the fun of the moment?  You bet your Swedish Pimple it was.  When the bite slowed a bit we switched to jig heads adorned with stinky soft plastic baits and used a different technique to continue to fool fish into eating our little puppets, danced specially for them 13 fathoms below our feet.  Did I mention we caught all of our fish jigging?

The weather conditions that morning, while not particularly brutal, were enough cause to don most of the foul weather gear we had brought.  During one of the short spells I wasn’t working a fish, I looked up long enough to notice the wind had died and the sun was shining partially down through breaks in the seemingly ever-present flow of clouds we’d encountered for the last couple of days.  Not a minute after I remarked (mistakenly of course) at how pleasant our current conditions were, I looked northward to see walls of blown snow moving across the lake in a different direction than any others we’d seen during our stay.  The northwest wind slammed into us like a stampede and the vortex was upon us.  Within twenty minutes our screens were void of fish, our sleds covered in snow and, as a final sign from the universe we’d had our shot, one guy’s electronics crapped out.  It was time to go.

The ride home was one of satisfaction. We hadn’t killed it all three days, or pulled up a giant, or some ridiculous number.  But the possibility was there, and we got ‘em.  I managed my largest laker to date, we finally fished with our New York contact and learned a few new tricks for finicky trout. But the simple pleasure of fulfilling of a goal, one we don’t get a chance to try and achieve all that often anymore, was enough.  We got ‘em just jigging.                

The King

Fishermen have long had a love/hate relationship with the Internet. On one hand it has turned us on to new angling opportunities, methods, spots, and the list goes on. On the other hand, everyone and their brother has access to that same information, which can lead to overcrowding, overfishing, loss of access, and that list goes on too. Whatever your school of thought about fishing and the Internet, at least two things are true: 1) you're reading this now thanks to it, and 2) it has connected all of us to other like-minded anglers. 

A fine example of the latter is my friendship with a fellow fish bum named Jon that I met through CTFisherman. For years now, Jon and I have shared valuable fishing information back and forth from our respective experiences on the water and ice. I love writing publicly, but I also enjoy having a small circle of anglers that I can confide in about a hot bite or a certain spot without the whole fishing community able to find out. Jon is a good guy to have in your circle. 

A few years ago, he moved from Connecticut to New York, which put him a stone's throw away from some incredible fishing opportunities, none more so than through the ice of Lake George (affectionately referred to some as "The King" due to its namesake, King George II). In the last few years, Jon has established himself among a pack of lake trout gurus, which has really helped cut his learning curve on Lake George and dial-in his jigging technique.It didn't matter much in 2012 as the massive lake never froze, but this past winter was another story when Jon iced over 100 lakers before I realized what I was missing just a little over three hours away.

News from Jon about a good bite materializing on The King started coming in early February. There was an open invitation, but it was difficult to commit to a weekend in the Adirondacks with a trip to Maine already scheduled. It wasn't until the ride home from the Sebago skunking when I made up my mind to continue the quest for lake trout the following weekend. Who knows when the next time this kind of opportunity would present itself? With the blessing from the home front, it was all systems go to New York with my good buddy Aaron on board and anxious as me. 

The only missing piece was Jon. He couldn't join us that weekend, yet was more than happy to offer a weekend of lake trout fishing on a silver platter in the form of access points, GPS coordinates, and advice on everything from tackle to technique. All we had to do was show up and show up we did on a Saturday morning in late February. For the next two days Aaron and I didn't do much other than fish our brains out for lake trout. We barely ate, drank or stopped to soak in the scenery. It was a constant state of working to figure out the continuous stream of lake trout showing up on our electronics. It was ice fishing at a furious pace and we loved every second of it. I'll save the rest of the story for another time and let the photos and video speak for themselves. Thanks again, Jon!

When Going Gets Tough

It began smack in the middle of February with my yearly journey to see a longtime fishing buddy, Wayne from Maine. For weeks leading up to the trip, I anxiously watched weather forecasts waiting for a windless cold snap that never came. Instead, Sebago Lake remained mostly ice-free for the second year in a row and the annual lake trout derby we've built a tradition around was canceled again. Even though the Big Bay would've required a boat to fish, thankfully two of Sebago's smaller bays had enough ice for our liking and our plans to chase "togue" remained intact.

As always on the eve of our first day of fishing, we made the customary stop to oldschool Jordan's General Store nestled on Sebago Lake's western shore. Jordan's is a tiny one-stop shop for essentials like bait, beer and recent intel from Greg Cutting, the resident lake trout whisperer. Greg had been ice fishing Sebago the past three days with very little to show for it, but he assured us the fish had to eat eventually and why not during the two days I was in town?  Just before leaving, we huddled around a big bathymetric map on the wall and picked a spot that had treated us well in the past; one that could be reached on foot and offered a nice array of drop-offs that lakers seem to love.

Ice huts dot Sebago Lake's Lower Bay

A collection of Swedish Pimples, a tried and true lake trout lure.

After a fun night of catching up over drinks and darts, we gave the sun time to creep up before staking our claim between a few groups already established on Sebago's Lower Bay. In depths ranging from 40 to over 100 feet of water, our crew of four set a large spread of tip-ups with dead suckers on bottom and live smelt hanging just off. In between I drilled a few dozen extra holes for jigging, which is easily my favorite way to fish for lakers. It had been exactly one year since I'd last targeted them and optimism was high right out of the gate. Weather conditions seemed fishy and we dropped down everything but the kitchen sink, yet I can count on one hand the amount of marks that showed up on the electronics that day. Still, a tough outing on Sebago was nothing new for us, nor did it keep us from having a blast in a most beautiful winter setting. Plus we still had a whole day of ice fishing ahead of us, right?

It's a proven fact that breakfast sandwiches taste better on Sebago Lake

Tools of the trade

Jigging like a madman

Day 2: Hell on Ice

When I awoke in the dark the following morning, the wind was already howling and there was a fresh coat of snow covering the ground. The forecast for the day wasn't a good one, but we were accustomed to nasty weather, especially on derby weekend. It became clear just how bad it was going to be while we were unloading our gear in the empty lakeside parking lot. No one, I repeat, no one else was stubborn (read dumb) enough to be out in those punishing conditions, but Wayne and I only get to ice fish together one weekend a year so it wasn't up for debate. 

The chosen location was a different spot than the day before and required about a mile trek to where two points bottleneck the bay. The spot looked great on paper and it made sense to try an area where lake trout could easily ambush prey. The only bad thing about walking a mile to a spot is the walk back and we probably definitely would have abandoned the plan if the wind was in our face to start. Instead we trudged single file in each others footsteps to our destination over 80 feet of water. The pop-up shelter would be a Godsend this day and we all had to work together to make sure it didn't blow across the lake while setting it up. Once everything was anchored down, I drilled some holes inside the hut and set up shop. Wayne, his son and friend were crazy enough to set traps outside, but I focused my efforts inside and hoped the lake trout would come to me.

Even the little things were tough on day two




Brutal is the first word that comes to mind when describing conditions on day two. The situation was so hellish outside the shelter that it easily ranked among the top three worst weather days I've ever fished in. Nevertheless, we still had our chances to hook up. Over the course of the morning, about a half dozen trout showed up on the screen and you could almost cut the tension with a knife each time it happened. No matter what we danced in front of their faces, we couldn't get them to chase.  

With a mile walk and a four hour drive hanging over me, it was an easy decision to call it a day before lunch. The next 45 minutes was something I wouldn't wish on my worse enemy. It was a head-down-hands-in-pockets walk back to the lot, only looking up every few minutes to make sure I was still on the right trajectory. Wayne and I can look back on it now and laugh, but it was tough day to be an ice fisherman. But it's tough days like that Sunday on Sebago that make the good days so sweet. And little did I know that I would have a couple really good days on another famous lake several hundred miles away just a week later.

The walk of shame

Lake George Road Trip

My ice fishing gear may be in storage for an eight month hiatus, but I'm still reliving trips from this past winter like they were yesterday. One that sticks out was a road trip to Lake George in New York. My buddy Jon who lives in that region had been telling me for years that I needed to get there. It was one of those things that I brushed off by saying, "I know, I know. Maybe next year!" Well the stars and moon aligned in February, and on the heels of a brutal skunking in Maine, my friend Aaron and I headed to the Adirondacks with hopes of better luck for lake trout. Unfortunately, Jon couldn't fish with us, but to say he put things on a silver platter for us would be an understatement. I'm talking GPS points right to the holes that he caught over 100 lake trout out of this winter. The two day binge was some of the most fun I've ever had on ice. We worked so hard we barely had time to eat or drink. The crazy part is, we were just truly getting dialed in on the trout right before it was time to head back to civilization. It's all good though, the Lake George seed has been planted and it's spreading like wildfire. Like Sebago Lake and Cuttyhunk, I have a feeling this trip will be an annual staple moving forward.

I hope to share more details about the road trip soon. In the meantime, here is our two days on Lake George boiled down to four minutes.