As many know, Saturday was the free fishing day up in VT.
Allan and I decided to try for Salmon and Smelt (cant get them in MA) on a body of water neither of us had ever fished. There are also no maps of this place so it was pretty much going off of the landscape.
We hit the road at 5am,stopped for bait, and were at the lake by 6:30. As for the spot, well...Lets just say its not your typical walk in from the parking lot..Using a couple ropes we were able to get our sleds down the hill/cliff face to get to our spot.
With the wind predicted to be 15mph with gusts over 30 and snow for most of the day, we setup in an area that would block us from the wind. Having our flip overs we werent to concerned if we had to move.
The plan was to target Salmon,Lakers, and Smelt. Start out by jigging till we locate fish and then drop tilts.
Allan started things off with a nice Smelt bite right off the bat. I was looking for salmon and lakers. After a few moves and about 1/4mile from where we dropped in, i found some salmon that wanted to play. Unfortunately this meant wind and snow straight to the face.. But it was worth it.
I was able to jig up a salmon on the 23rd hole. I was marking plenty of bait as well, so i dropped a tilt and called Allan over. Within minutes I had another flag up and my second Salmon of the day. We kept moving and jigging and dropping tilts in the holes we were seeing fish while jigging. While setting up my 3rd tilt I had a flag that resulted in my 3rd salmon of the day. Headed back to finish putting in my third tilt that i had just dropped the shiner in and about 5 ft of line. The tilt wasnt even setup, just sitting on the ice. I noticed the spool slowly turning, and ran over. Sure enough there was another salmon on the line but managed to pop off, bummer.
All the while Allan is quietly hammering the smelt setup within a few yards of me.
On the way back to where we got on we decided to jig for a few mins before leaving. Within minutes I managed to jig up my 4th Salmon of the day.
The jig stick was the weapon of choice again for us today, not only in locating fish, but in catching them as well. At the end of the day I had 4 salmon iced with a couple others dropped. Allan had about a dozen smelt in the bucket as well.
Good times as usual, this will be a tough one to beat next year.
Video here of some of the salmon
https://youtu.be/jIyZjaHKR9A
