Plattsburgh, New York

Today I embarked on a brutal 13 hour bus ride back up to Plattsburgh that had me arriving just in time to make it to my 5pm lecture. About 30 minutes before arrival, I received an email, informing me that class had been cancelled. Of course I knew what I had to do. I quickly grabbed my fishing gear and waders and headed to a nearby river to target some wild brown trout. The river was extremely high and flowing faster than ever before, which made it difficult to properly retrieve my jerkbait. After spending some time trying some deeper holes, I finally hooked into a gorgeous brown trout! The ripping current made for an incredible fight, even with heavier gear than normal. I’d call this short trip more of a success than my Pennsylvania opening trout weekend, as I only landed a small stocked rainbow and a baby wild brown.

After being skunked on all of my last 8 open water outings, it feels good to finally get on a fish. Not only have I been skunked, I haven’t even gotten a bite in open water since January 17th. But all the effort payed off with this new personal best Northern Pike today! This guy came in at 29.5 inches, an inch longer than my previous personal best, but still shy of my multi-year long goal of catching a 30 inch pike.

Today was my most successful day of ice fishing yet! I managed to land two gorgeous lake trout with the biggest coming in at 30 inches long, my new biggest fish through the ice. The day started out very calm at the first spot, but quickly picked up to around 30 mph winds, causing the tent to nearly fly away multiple times. Thankfully I only managed to fall once on the slick ice, however, my entire leg went down the hole when trying to pack up the tent. I’m still trying to figure out what kind of leeches/worms this lake trout coughed up.

Got to hit the ice this morning to target some lake trout and I managed to land two! These were both on the smaller side, but it’s still quite the fight pulling these things up from almost 97 feet of water! The first spot of the day had the clearest ice I’ve ever seen and was well over a foot thick. I could even see the fish fighting from almost 30 feet below the surface!

This morning I got another chance to target some aggressive lake trout through the ice. I tried last Friday and managed to get about 7 bites, but unfortunately, I missed each fish. Today my luck was a little bit better as I finally landed one fish, after missing four others. It was a bit on the slower side since I spent about 10 hours on the ice today, so bites were coming only every 2 hours. This gorgeous lake trout came in at 24 inches long, which makes it the largest fish I have ever caught through the ice. I have a feeling this record won’t last long as there are plenty of bigger lake trout roaming around.

Caught a gorgeous little pike yesterday afternoon on the jerkbait. It’s getting cold up here so I’m hoping to get on some lake trout soon, but I’d love to get a 30 inch pike before winter rolls around.

The stars aligned today! I was starting to lose hope in landing a musky after a few unsuccessful attempts this year. Today was quite the opposite. On the very first cast of the day, I watched a giant shadow follow my swimbait, he struck the bait before I could even process what was going on and I set the hook. The fight was on! This guy took some serious runs and I successfully opened my bail to let him pull line with my thumb. A trick that I failed to do properly when I lost a pike of a lifetime. Finally I managed to pull this beast to shore and land him. He came in at 37 inches, a new personal best! Another hour and a half went by with no bites, but I had plenty of confidence with multiple deep pools ahead of me. All of a sudden, I noticed an open mouth behind my swimbait right near shore. The fish had missed, but slowly crept into view, still interested in my bait. I turned the bait hard to the right and he engulfed it. The fight was short as my 12lb line overpowered him. This guy came in at 31 inches long! While unhooking this guy, he thrashed and chomped down on my thumb. He left my hand covered in blood and gave me a gnarly wound. No complaints here though!

Tried for musky this morning with no luck. Ran into Ryan Jones and apparently he had quite the exciting yet disappointing morning. After losing the most expensive lure in my tackle box, I switched tactics and tried to target some brook trout. Pretty quickly I managed to land a little brown trout and a gorgeous Brook trout on my little roadrunner. I am unsure if this guy was wild or stocked. Yesterday I also managed to land a nice smallmouth and loads of yellow perch.