Cold Lake report

[Mistagin]

My wife and I spent a couple of days at Cold Lake this past week . Nice campground, quiet and clean.

We arrived on Wednesday afternoon, set up camp and then launched the boat and went fishing. Having never been there I wasn't sure where to go for lakers, so just headed straight out north from the campground to deep water, got to 100 feet and dropped 2 lines (on riggers) down, one to 80 feet and the other to 95. Within minutes we had our first fish - 66 cm . Within 2 hours we boated 7, no keepers though.

The next day we caught 4, largest a 68 cm. Then the wind and waves picked up, too much to be comfortable messing with riggers and rods in my 14.5 Princecraft, so we went exploring, swimming off a beach, and pike fishing for awhile in calm water, caught a bunch of little 'hammer-handles'.

On Friday we went back out and boated 13 or 14 more lakers (lost count) - several in the 60's cm range. We also lost several more on missed hook sets, long-distance releases (ha, ha) and a couple of 'net releases' (trying to teach my wife proper netting technique), and some on double headers.

Having done lots of salmon / trout downrigging back east I've got a substantial and diverse collection of lures. So I experimented with different lures and everything I put down worked well - spoons, plugs (ripplin' redfin, rapala, lyman), flasher and fly, different colours and patterns, and with lines set from 60 feet down to 105, trolling in depths from 60 feet to 200, and various speeds - averaging 2.5 - 3 km/hr. At one point I sped up to raise the cannon balls up over a shoal we came up on and was probably moving at 6 km/hr or so and had simultaneous hits on both rods, landed one .

At times it was a matter of setting a line down and the other would go off, or both would go within seconds of each other . Then we'd troll for half an hour with no action at all. Over all Friday's outing was the best downrigging day I can remember having (on my own boat) .

All fish looked very healthy, fat and chunky. One I got a picture of looked like a football - not particularly long (50 cm?) but the fattest fish I've seen. Another one was so full of baitfish it barely had room to get the lure (a spoon) in its mouth; when I opened it's mouth to remove the hook the eyes of its latest victim were looking back out!!!

All fish were successfully released .

[Brandonkop]

Great report I love down rigging cold lake the summer... The fish always seem to be on the chew.

[-JR-]

Congrats in havng a good day. Lakers should be feeding more as the water gets cooler going into pre -spawn. Football size Lakers are either full of eggs or more than likely just full of air, from coming up to fast.
Have to watch them after you release them ,as they can not swim down with the air in them.
I am going to try and hold the tail lower in the water than their heads so they can burp the air out next time I get a floater .

Laker Season Catch limit is 0 after Sept 15

[Brandonkop]

Originally Posted by -JR-

Congrats in havng a good day. Lakers should be feeding more as the water gets cooler going into pre -spawn. Football size Lakers are either full of eggs or more than likely just full of air, from coming up to fast.
Have to watch them after you release them ,as they can not swim down with the air in them.
I am going to try and hold the tail lower in the water than their heads so they can burp the air out next time I get a floater .

Laker Season Catch limit is 0 after Sept 15

That's not completely correct laker retention reopens November 15th.

[Mistagin]

Originally Posted by -JR-

Congrats in havng a good day. Lakers should be feeding more as the water gets cooler going into pre -spawn. Football size Lakers are either full of eggs or more than likely just full of air, from coming up to fast.
Have to watch them after you release them ,as they can not swim down with the air in them.
I am going to try and hold the tail lower in the water than their heads so they can burp the air out next time I get a floater .

Laker Season Catch limit is 0 after Sept 15

Thanks JR.

Maybe, since this is AO's fishing forum, I should have mentioned that out of respect for the fish and fishery and regs I take time to release each fish properly as, over many years of experience gained, I've learned how to do so well. That means I rarely, except for measuring or taking a picture (and we only took pictures of 2), remove them from the net, preferring to unhook them while still in the net and in the water beside the boat if possible. As well, if I think if a fish needs it I will 'burp' them (gently wet-stroke their belly while in the water beside the boat), sometimes they will audibly 'burp', and I will watch them successfully swim down.

I've found that floaters can often be revived by doing just as you describe, hold them right-side up by the tail, tail down, head up, and 'wiggle' them a bit to oxygenate their gills (like with pike). Doing that will sometimes generate a 'burp', revive them, and off they will go . I learned to do that with lakers back on Georgian Bay in Ontario where they often came up from very deep.

I admit we did have one that struggled, and floated belly up even after 'burping' and working with it beside the boat, so we circled back around ( a large circle due to having both rods set), and scooped it back up in the net, which revived it, and then released it and watched it swim straight down . Perhaps it was shocked a bit from the warmer surface water.

Other than that one no fish re-floated, at least none we saw - and no gulls came in to signal such either .

[-JR-]

Mistagin,good to hear that does work holding the tail lower.
Heading out next saturday for some laker action,I will give it a try if need be .

[Willowtrail]

Was out there fri- mon. We fished in the wind. It wasn't ideal but we netted 60 fish. Only 1 was retained and I released a couple of barely legal ones. Lost what felt to be some gooders but all in all a great 4 days on the water.

[lotw]

Landed 10 this weekend around 30 cm maybe even a bit smaller - great to see the little ones too.