The Wind

The forecast for the first day of our four day 4 in 4 challenge was for 45-50 degree temperatures and 25 mph sustained winds, gusting to 40 mph. Captain Hans said, “Let’s go! There are fish to be caught, maties! (He didn’t really say maties, I just think it sounds like a captain.) Just Chris and I looked at each other with bewildered stares. We both know that any reasonably intelligent, seasoned angler knows that you cannot fish in those kinds of winds, especially on the Great Lakes. Knowing that there was no way we wanted to be on Lake Ontario in those conditions, we turned to our buddy, our captain, and said “Okay! Let’s go!

Captain Hans’ Rationale

I don’t think that anybody understands the wind, currents, and weather in the Buffalo area any better than Captain Hans. We usually are thinking one thing about the day’s trip, and he is thinking another. He is always right, usually. In this case, we were thinking that we should stay at camp. Hans thought that we should be chasing fish on the Niagara Bar. The biggest factor in our decision was that the wind was coming from the south southwest. That means lower waves than any other wind since the waves have very little time to build. Hans also knew that Buffalo Harbor had been so muddy that nobody had been able to fish it for days, and while that south wind would blow the mud out of the harbor and near shore areas, it would take a day or so. However, the lower Niagara River would be a safety net. If the lake was too windy, the lower river should be protected by the steep cliffs. Scattered showers were predicted, but nothing sustained or heavy. The water temperature was in the mid-forties, and that is a good temperature to draw the lakers to the bar. Also, Hans just upgraded to a 23 foot Warrior boat, probably the most stable and capable multispecies fishing platform out there. And Hans is always usually right, so we went.

The Weather

This is our third year of doing this spring trip with Capt. Hans. The weather has been terrible every day, every year. My wife was watching this year’s forecast and started telling me how miserable this year was going to be. I told her that there was no way that the weather could be worse than it had been the last wo years. WRONG! Again.

The air temperature started around 42 degrees and made it to around 50 by early afternoon, but when the water temperature is 44 degrees, and the wind is blowing at a steady 20 miles per hour, it is cold. Just Chris and I both had full winter gear on. The sun was no help, since it was seldom seen. Waves were 2.5-foot rollers, pushing to 3 + as the day progressed and then the wind gusted above 40 miles per hour. Fortunately, it never rained. We were never cold, but we were bounced around plenty.

Here is the really good news. Friday is supposed to be 50 degrees and sunny. Now, the bad news. Thursday starts out at 35 degrees and only makes it to 45 by mid afternoon. Hopefully it will not be too bad because the winds will only be around 6 mph and out of the east. If the bass are biting, it will be warm enough. It is funny how catching fish seems to make the weather better. That was the case yesterday.

Day 1 Fishing the Niagara bar

We launched close to the mouth of the lower Niagara River. Just Chris and I were supposed to pull the boat around to the outside of the dock when Hans pulled out of the ramp. The wind and current were so strong that we could not budge it. However, Hans was able to easily drive it around and we headed out, not yet knowing if the lake was fishable. When we got there, we could see the 2 to 3 foot waves rolling, but the Warrior cut through them as if they were non-existent. That boat made all the difference on this trip. Many boats would not have managed to get out there, let alone be able to fish it. When Captain Hans had the boat moving, it was like sitting in your living room. Well, not quite, but it was comfortable. Seriously, the boat did an amazing job. We rocked and rolled as we were drifting, so much so that we had to sit to fish and you had to hang on to move about the boat, but the Warrior never shuddered.

We were fishing rod in hand, drifting for lakers. The wind never let up and we had to let a lot of line out to get the 5 inch swim baits to maintain contact with the bottom, even with 1/2 and 3/4 ounce jig heads. We averaged a 1.7 mph drift speed which is, as Just Chris commented, walleye trolling speed. We hit 2 mph when we finally called it for the day.

The lakers only come up on the bar when the water temperature is to their liking, which is only about a two week period in the spring. They seek the ideal water temperature all year round and will be found where there is bait in water that is in their preferred temperature range. We had the right temperature, but when we hit our first spot, there were no bait clouds or fish on the graph. We drifted through the second spot with the same results. When we hit the third spot Hans started to mark huge clouds of bait fish, almost solid on the screen, but no fish. But we persisted.

We had been on the water for almost an hour when I heard Hans say to Just Chris, “You got ‘im!” Chris was perched in the bow seat to my right, and as I turned toward him, I could see his rod tip bent over and bouncing, clearly a fish. As I was congratulating him, the tip straightened out with a sudden jerk. “He’s unzippered.” Just Chris had a look of disappointment on his face. Hans assured him that it happens sometimes, and we continued to fish. Ten minutes later his rod doubled over again, and again, it got away. But this was a good sign. These were probably lakers and they were there.

But I was wondering what I was doing wrong. Normally, the jigging technique that works is to pop the jig off of the bottom with a quick, long jerk of the rod tip and then let the bait flutter back down. But that was not working for me. Maybe the jig took too long to drop back down, given our drift speed. I don’t know for sure. I do know that it was hard to maintain bottom contact and keep the bait in the fish zone. Talking with Just Chris today, he said he had the same problem.

I was bouncing bottom pretty well because we were coming up and over a hump when I felt a heavy thump. Not the teeth rattling smack of a violent hit, but a definite heavy thump. I ripped the rod tip up and to my right as fast and high as I could while sitting down. The tip of my Carver series Bad Ted rod did its job, driving the hook home and then bowing to the fish while keeping a tight line. After a couple of head shakes, the fish started to my right and then came towards me. That maneuver freed the fish from my hook. Or so I thought. It turns out that the fish was swimming towards the boat faster than I was reeling, and that was why I could not feel it. I quickly caught up to it, but when it got to the side of the boat it tried to keep right on swimming. I was able to stop it and Hans, ever so quick with a net, nabbed it. We had a nice laker, about 8 pounds. We did not know it, but a pattern was about to develop.

I had two more hits and landed two more lakers. The fish were a bit scattered, but we would get one, maybe two each time we drifted over a hump that had a huge ball of bait on it. The rest of the fish that we caught were all on the backside of a hump. We each caught three fish. The waves were steadily building and each time that we moved back up to reset the drift we all said that it was the last drift. We knew we had to head to the calm of the river soon. But on each drift we would pick up a fish or have a hit, so we would do one more last drift.

The wind suddenly picked up significantly. The waves were consistently in the 3 foot plus range, pushing 4 feet and we were about to call it when Just Chris had a fish just stop his bait. When I looked over, I thought he was snagged. But then the snagged moved and Just Chris started to hold on. Shortly thereafter, he landed a fish of about 15 pounds, a lunker laker! A few minutes after releasing that fish, his line stopped again. It looked like he had another lunker on. I asked Hans if I should bring my line in, since I was sure he had a bigger fish. But Hans said to keep fishing. “We’ll get doubles”, he said. And we did.

I was watching Chris while Hans got the net when I felt that teeth rattling hit we expected from these lakers but had not experienced today. The drag screamed and that always gets the adrenalin pumping. “Don’t lose this fish. Don’t mess up the video.” I just could not lose this fish. Hans had his phone out and was videoing us working doubles. Not only did I not want to ruin his video, who wants to lose a fish on a Facebook reel?

Hans now was trying to video with his phone, land Just Chris’ fish and stay upright in big waves, all while leaning over the side of the boat. I did not get to see it all because I was so focused on not losing a fish. It sounded a bit chaotic, and the resultant video indicated that maybe Hans was not quite so quick with the net this time. But he got the fish netted, out of the net, gave it to Just Chris and turned to net my fish. And then this happened.

Double lunkers! An eight and a 12 pound laker. DOUBLES! When the wind picked up the fish got active and the last three fish were caught in short order. After we simultaneously released the fish, we headed to the Lower Niagara to escape the wind and waves.

We had managed about three hours on the bar. It took about an hour for Hans to locate the fish and establish the pattern. It took us a while longer to realize that the fish were only hitting the baits as they bounced on the bottom, and that the usual sharp jerk was not the presentation they wanted. Having figured out the pattern and presentation, in the last two hours we each caught four lakers, all between 8 and 16 pounds. We also hooked but lost 4 more. The fishing conditions were difficult, but the fishing was magnificent.

Fishing the lower Niagara River

When we got to the Niagara it did not look like we expected it to look. The rolling whitecaps told us that this was not going to be the sanctuary from the wind that we had expected. The wind had changed from south to west and now the steep walls of the river cut just funneled the wind down the river, both river and wind intensifying as they traveled toward the lake. The waves were not as high as on the main lake, but the current was fast. We were not even sure that we would be able to keep the baits down in the water column. But we decided to give it a go. After all, there were fish to be caught.

As we suspected, keeping the smaller jigs and tubes down was nearly impossible. We had broken out our smallmouth rods, expecting to catch some big smallmouth bass, but we just could not get the lures down. Shortly after we dropped our lines Just Chris managed to land a decent smallie, but that would be his last fish of the day.

At one point Hans told me that I had too much line out. In a current like this, there is a point where there is so much line out that the river lifts the line, causing the bait to rise. He told me to find the sweet spot where there was enough line to let the lure get down, but not enough to cause the lure to rise.

I was playing with the right amount of line to let out when I felt that teeth rattling hit, but harder, sharper than before. Instinctively I set the hook and tightened the line. I had failed to check my drag and it was way too loose. I figured that out when Hans yelled, “Your drag is way too loose! Tighten it up.” As I did, I could feel the weight of the fish, and I knew it was a really heavy smallmouth using the current to its advantage. There was a lot of head shaking going on and short side to side dashes. Just Chris was not sure what I had on, and Captain Hans said it was not a smallmouth. To that I replied that it was a good sized smallie. And to that, Hans said, “It isn’t fighting like a smallie. Not a smallie.” I knew he was wrong, but then he shouted, “It’s a brown. And a nice one.” Once again, he was usually right and I was wrong, still.

It was the battle of day for me. My little Carver series Bad Ted smallmouth rod proved to be more than a match for the trout. It has enough tip to immediately feel the bite, power enough to set the hook, the right amount of flex to cushion the sudden moves of the big fish, and plenty of power to control the fish at the net.

The big brown dodged left and right, dove down and then shot up. It was fast and heavy but could not escape Hans. He was back on the net and back to his usual netting form, quickly capturing the trophy. After briefly admiring the incredible beauty of the fish, I returned it to the water.

That really was the last drift of the day for us. It was a little earlier than we usually quit, but we had a long drive ahead of us. Anyway, we all knew that there was little reward in continuing to try and tame Ma Nature. We all agreed that the day on the water was done.

We already had a great day. We did not need more. Some might say it was foolish to even go out on the lake in 25 mph winds with 40 mph gusts. But that would be wrong, IF you have the Warrior that I call Big Blue, and Captain Hans!

End of the Day

The long trip home seemed short. We relived all the events of the day the whole way back to my truck. We caught those fish over and over again. We complemented ourselves on being so brave as to challenge Ma Nature. We thought our selves very smart for trusting Hans’ judgment. We talked about how truly amazing the Warrior is. And we planned the next day.

Wednesday was predicted to be the worst day of the week. Temperatures falling into the mid 30’s, rain in the morning, changing to snow. Mild winds, but a very cold and wet day. The kicker was the wind coming out of the north. The north wind is seldom any good for fishing. We discussed the possibilities, which included the fact that we could go but there were no guarantees (but there never are), the only place that might work would be the north gap, that we should just bag it, or we could try it and see how it went. In truth, we all wanted to call it off but none of us wanted to be the big baby who said to cancel the trip. But we did cancel it.

It was the right call. Several times during the day Just Chris and I congratulated ourselves on our good judgement. It would have been beyond miserable. We have fished in miserable conditions. To have been on the lake today would have been unbearable.

A Note: Charlie, a.k.a. Lucky Chucky, usually is on this trip. He could not make it this year because his wife had a significant surgery two weeks ago. He decided to stay at home and help her recover. I can’t write about this traditional trip without mentioning him. Chuck is a good man and while we miss him, we support him and wish his wife a speedy recovery. Next year!

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Up next: Day Three of the 4 in 4 Challenge