Derby Day-Sioux Narrow Ontario

Saturday AM started just like the day prior, brutally cold temps and some very stiff equipment.  However, today we were going to be fishing the local Lake Trout Derby.  What was particularly exciting about this Derby was the fact that you got to fish wherever you wanted as long as it was in Regina Bay.  You drilled your own holes and fished as hard as you want to.  All fish had to be weighed in by 4 PM and had to arrive at the scales alive and capable of being released.

At first I was a little skeptical of the fact that we could get a fish to the scales alive but we had a plan.  First we had to catch a fish to weight.  Second we would immediately put it in a cooler full of water and head to the weigh-in with the fish in the cooler.  Matt from Crawford's Camp assured me it would work, and it did, just great.

Using the LakeMaster chip we split our group of seven into 3 groups covering 3 nice breaklines in 50-70 feet of water.  All the spots were pretty similar, nice points extending out to deep water with sharp breaklines.  Again, this was my first year having the LakeMaster Data on this trip and it yielded big results.

Spot one for Noah and I ended up being a dud.  Lots of baitfish and tullibee but not the big laker's we were looking for so we headed to spot two, near where Greg, Matt and Brian were fishing.  After a short 5 minutes of jigging I tied into a decent trout.  It was very interesting fighting the trout with money on the line as it brought me back to my summer walleye tournaments.  I honestly love that feeling, it just adds a little pressure to the situation!  The fight didn't take long and off we were on the sled to weigh the first trout of the day a nice 9.9 pound fish.  Hey, we were on the board.

Upon arriving back at the group I was told that Moreno was hooked up with a fish so off Matt went with the sled to pick up Moreno's fish.  As it turns out Moreno and I were fighting our fish at the same time, his was just a lot bigger and took over 20 minutes to land.  Off to the scales went Moreno and weighed in a nice 17.5 pound fish, good enough for second place at the time as someone had weighed in a 23.5 pound fish inbetween Moreno and I.  That was going to be tough to top for sure!

After a flurry of action we decided a move was in order.  While Matt Carlander and Moreno stuck it out in the place that produced the 17.5 pounder the rest of us moved a couple miles to a nice steep shelf that extended out into Regina Bay.  As I was clearing holes Noah hooked into what appeared to be a whitefish, until it made that long, drag screaming, 60 foot run down to the bottom.  Yes sir, it was another trout and the move was paying off already. 

This was Noah's first battle with a trout and at one point he asked for the "fighting belt" which you saltwater guys can appreciate.  Noah patiently battled his trout for over 18 minutes before we were finally able to get the big head of the fish in the hole.  Out came our second biggest trout of the day a nice 16.73 lb fish.  Man this was getting fun!

As Noah and I arrived back at the group Matt Crawford and Greg were working another fish that would not bite.  Finally after some coaxing Greg had our 4th trout of the day hooked up.  Greg battled this fish as it made drag screaming run after run.  With cold hands and a sore back Greg wasn't sure if the fight was ever going to come to an end, but it did.  Out came a 16.2 pound trout and left our group sitting in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 10th place.  Despite over an hour of fishing time left, we decided we should try to catch the evening walleye bite so we put a quick end to our tournament day and headed out across the lake for some quick walleye action before the tournament awards.

Being short of time we opted for a spot close to camp to fish walleye.  The walleye bite would best be describes as slow but that didn't stop us from having a great time.  I should clarify that slow means each of us only caught a "few".  Hardly slow by certain standards, but after all, we were in Canada, eh!  We ended the night absolutely exhausted from laughing and making jokes about the days fishing and how lucky we were to catch those nice trout.

Before heading back to camp for the night we headed over to the weigh-in to see if we ended up in the money and sure enough, we took 2nd, 3rd and 4th and all 4 of our Trout were in the top 10.  Not bad considering there were 67 anglers fishing the Derby.  It was truly a great ending to a great day of fishing!