Irondequoit Bay Trip

male & female hooded megansers

The weather this spring has been awful for fishing.  It is April 29 and snowing outside.  YUCK!!  Last Friday I took a vacation day to see Jake who was home on leave from the USAF.  He is stationed in Oklahoma at Vance Air Force Base.  We debated with our friend Dave about whether or not to go fishing as the wind was 20 mph out of the northwest.  I convinced Dave to give Irondequoit Bay a try as I thought we could duck around one of the bays.

We stopped at Mitchels Bait and Tackle to get our minnows.  Great bait store.  They sell the minnows by the pound.  We got a half pound of fatheads and Niagara shiners.  I always get solid minnows from this store.

Once in the water we noticed an unusual amount of seagulls and turkey vultures.  We got to the bay and out of the wind.  There was dead fish all over the place which was why all the birds were around.  They were gizzard shad.  I had got a notice from the DEC that they kill off was caused by both VHS disease and unusually cold March.  We did enjoy watching a pair of male and female hooded mergansers diving and eating minnows.  Very pretty birds.

Dave caught a 5 pound small mouth bass, but that was it.  We had lightweight rigs and were hoping for perch.  After an hour we decided to go out into the bay and fish by a channel marker.  It was pretty windy and cold out there.  I cast my minnow and watched the line go out.   I watched the line going out anticipating it stopping as soon as the weight was on the bottom.  Well the line never stopped and I knew it was only 50' deep so I flipped the bail and set the hook.....at first I thought it was a snag, but then the snag moved!  My drag immediately went off with the big fish spooling me.  I could not imagine what the fish was, think possibly a sturgeon because it was screaming the line off my spool.  We chased it and after 15 minutes it finally surfaced and it was a brown trout.  The best part was I was using an ultralight rod with 2 pound test line so it was like hauling in a horse.  Jake manned the net and we landed a 23 pound brown trout.  Jake did a great job of successfully releasing it too.

Today Johnny-boy and I melted some lead and poured 80 pencil weights.  This should get us through the summer.  Something fun to do in the garage by a hot pot belly stove while the snow flies.