An Unorthodox Laker

The Skinny (for the time sensitive, give me the cliff-notes people…skip if you want to read the whole story):

I was bit by a bug two months ago that hammered me from 65 feet away.  My first ever lake trout came in the most unorthodox manner when I was ice fishing.  I thought I was prepared; I was wrong; rather than hitting a silver buckshot, tube jig, or Rapala, an eater “Laker” smoked my puny 1/32 oz. Clam Half Ant Drop jig tipped with a smelt eye.  Yes, again, a smelt eye.  It was an unbelievable fight (easily becoming the highlight catch of the ice fishing season) considering it was on my go-to ultra light rig mentioned below:

– Rod: St. Croix Avid Ice Glass (26” Light Action)
– Reel: Shimano Sienna 500FD
– Line: 3 pound Northland Bionic Ice Fluorosilk (Fluorocarbon)
– Lure: 1/64 oz. Clam Half Ant Drop Jig  (Red/White/Chartreuse)

The Story
I was bit by a bug a couple months ago. You know the irritating sound of a mosquito nearby looking to feast on your blood.  You also know the annoying, random hovering of gnats around your head prior to them chopping down on your skin to draw out a pool of liquid life that’s more than their pin-head sized bodies can handle.  Lastly, you know the maddening NASCAR drivers of the sky, the horsefly, that take their Daytona 500 equivalent number of lefts and laps around your head before they pack a menacing punch on your skin.  Thankfully I haven’t been exposed to any of those since last year. It was a different kind of bug.

Odd, considering it was in the middle of January in the deathly cold outdoors of Minnesota.  It came out of nowhere without notice.  I couldn’t hear it.  I barely saw it.  And, when I did, it quickly disappeared again.  In the blink of an eye, it appeared again and, before I could even flinch, it packed one heck of a punch.  I thought I was prepared; I was armed to the teeth.  Except this wallop didn’t get thrown within a boxer’s arm’s reach; rather, it was a 65 foot Hail Mary that hit me square in my right hand – fortunately I didn’t drop it.

“So Batman smoked you in the hand with his grappling gun?” you ask.  No, but it’s pretty %@&# close.  Shrouded in the dark depths lurks a predator that, pound for pound, could be one of the toughest in the world.  And it quite possibly may be one of the fastest too.

Remember how I said that I was armed to the teeth?  Anyone who knows me will vouch that I bring an arsenal of gear. In addition to this, I spend countless hours researching the beast – where to find it, what tools to use to lure it in, how to hook it (there, do any of those key words narrow it down a little for you?). No matter the circumstance, I was ready for it. Or so I thought…

Fishing for Lake Trout aka “Lakers” – the Kings of the Deep – is a completely different experience.  I won’t go into much detail other than to mention that you typically have to fish very deep water (sometimes in excess of 100 feet) and jig, not at one specific depth, but in 10-15 foot progressions (shelves) – start deep and jig your way up to the surface in intervals.  They can appear on your Vexilar (fish finder) at random depths and then disappear only to reappear when you bring your lure to where they’re swimming.  If they like what your presenting them, you’ll definitely know it!

Before going gung ho jigging for them with my medium heavy “Laker Rig”, I dropped down some tip ups rigged with leftover sucker minnows.  Suckers don’t have much of a presence in the lake I was on, so I figured they probably wouldn’t be the ideal meal.  What the lake does have is quite an abundance of rainbow smelt.  If anything, one would think logically that a Laker would enjoy a smelt dangling a few feet off the bottom.  So my plan was to hole hop for smelt until I spotted them with my Vexilar and hook them with my ultralight rig:

– Rod: St. Croix Avid Ice Glass (26” Light Action)
– Reel: Shimano Sienna 500FD
– Line: 3 pound Northland Bionic Ice Fluorosilk (Fluorocarbon)
– Lure: 1/64 oz. Clam Half Ant Drop Jig  (Red/White/Chartreuse)

Let’s rewind briefly to the week prior.  I was out on the same lake fishing for them.  The smelt were extremely finicky; they’d only nip at the smallest waxworm morsel.  The three of us (Jake, Matt, and me) figured they’d hit euro larvae since they’re a fraction of the size of a normal waxworm.  The problem was that when we got out to the lake we realized we forgot the euros.  I then resorted to using some dead ones in my tackle bag.  Jake managed to scrounge up a fathead minnow left on the ice from where a morning fisherman set up in case those skunky old euros weren’t performing.

Lo and behold all the smelt did was sniff my lure and run for the hills.  I initiated Plan B: tip the hook with a fathead eye.  Why the eye?  As a kid I grew up with aquariums full of cichlids, which are extremely territorial and easily provoked to fight each other.  When one met their demise the first thing the other fish would do was peck away the dead one’s eyes.  So I figured if it was so highly sought after in my aquariums, why would it change with wild ones in a lake?  There’s a reason why most lures have fake eyes on them, right???  Heck, a good portion of my half ant lure has a Swarovski gem – a fake eye!

I dropped her down to the bottom (about 65 feet) giving an extra 2-5 feet of wiggle room for the fish to move in and strike.  Within seconds, the ultra-sensitive rod tip indicated the mini nips coming from below.  A little twitch of the wrist is all it takes with the fluorocarbon line I had rigged (hardly any stretch compared to mono), so I made a little jerk with my rod and reeled up the first of 4 smelt.  After replacing the 3 tip ups (one for Jake, my other buddy Matt, and me) I had run out of fathead eyes.  Since the suckers didn’t work in the water, I figured I should catch one more smelt just in case we needed an extra for our tip ups.  Matt cut up the 4th smelt in the bucket and was jigging with some of the body. This left me the head, which translated to two eyes to work with!

After a little finagling, I dropped down the half ant again.  About five minutes later I had a nice mark come through and it disappeared.  Not a second later my little 1/64 oz. Clam Half Ant got clobbered.

“Zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!” my line peeled while my rod instantly went from flat to 90 degrees.  The alarm sounded upstairs in my noggin, “This isn’t a smelt or some dink perch that have been hanging out on the bottom!”  Between that hope running through my head and my resounding heart beats, my buddies’ voices became ambient mumbles – I’ve been waiting for years to have a Laker on the line and there’s no way I was going to lose focus even as Jake and Matt crowded around my hole!  No pressure at all right??

Any angler who is using gear below the fight-weight class of a fish knows as soon as they set their hook: something much larger is on the line.  Instead of delivering the fight, one has to, like Rocky, roll with the punches until their feisty foe grows too tired to carry on.  Lakers are the epitome of fish perfection: built for speed, power, and stamina – a hydrodynamic marvel in the water.  There were moments when he just took off like a rocket; in those I just maintained keeping a steady rod and let him take all the line he could.  There were moments when he’d jerk his head in left-right combos that made the end of my ultralight rod look like it was getting hit like a boxing speed bag (head nudges as we call them); in those I’d sustain tension on the line by slowly cranking my reel – there was no way was I going to give him a millimeter of slack.  As the fight progressed there was less running and more head nudges as the bullet body from below slowly grew exasperated.  The feisty guy juked away from coming through the hole a couple times but the hook-set was too true to let him go.  He finally succumbed.  Jake reached down, grasped his body, and iced him.

With jaws dropped and eyes bugged out the three of us gazed in wonder at what lay down in front of us: a king of the deep!  “YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!” we all bellowed in unison then whipped out our Neon Deion Sanders High Step and Touchdown Dance (fast forward to 0:33).  After a couple chest bumps and high fives we went back at it for the last half hour of fishing light.  I didn’t need to jig – my hand, as well as the rest of my body, was shaking.  It wasn’t because I was cold.  Most deer/big game hunters get them too after dropping an animal.  It’s the fever.  I was bit.  Now I’m hooked.

Especially after tossing it on a cedar plank in my charcoal Weber.  Stay tuned for the recipe coming soon!