NorthWest Kayak Anglers
Regional Discussions => Montana Kayak Fishing => Topic started by: pmmpete on April 03, 2019, 10:03:20 AM
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The Spring 2019 Mack Days lake trout fishing derby was scheduled for March 12-May 15, but it had to be delayed until March 22-May 19 because much of the lake was frozen over. On March 30 and 31, a friend and I participated in the derby in a motorboat. A lot of the lake was still solidly frozen over, and each night a sheet of ice formed over most of the open water, which made motorboating and fishing a challenge until it broke up and melted in the afternoon. On March 30 the ice formed overnight was about 5/16ths of an inch thick, which was too thick to push through in a kayak. It was clear that I wasn't going to be able to go kayak fishing unless I either waited until the ice formed the night before had mostly melted by the early afternoon, or the temperature started staying above freezing at night.
On April 2 I decided to do an afternoon of kayak fishing. Several of my favorite launch sites were still blocked by thick ice, so I decided to launch from the walk-in launch site on the north end of Finley Point. There was a foot or so of snow on the trail down to the lakeshore, so it was more of a ski-in launch site. Pulling my loaded kayak down the trail to the lakeshore was easy; pulling it back up the trail was more work. I had a great afternoon of lake trout fishing in sunny near-calm conditions.
This time of year in Flathead Lake, the most productive way to fish is by jigging for lake trout on the bottom in 170-240 feet of water. Check out the catch statistics in the Mack Days website. Some of the anglers have had several days where they caught their limit of 100 lake trout.
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It's a new sport: ski-yak
Beautiful day!! Thanks for the photos.
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We are not seeing any fish pictures here, Pete. We will take your word it was good.
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We are not seeing any fish pictures here, Pete. We will take your word it was good.
Guess he was eating them real fresh!
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We are not seeing any fish pictures here, Pete. We will take your word it was good.
I got 7 on Saturday, 9 on Sunday, and 3 Tuesday afternoon. But they were generally small and nothing to boast about. If you want to see pictures of big lake trout, check out http://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=20421.0.
For Mack Days, a fish is a fish, so catching small fish is good. They don't take as long to land, and they don't take up much room in your cooler. I know a guy who caught a 12 inch long tagged lake trout which was that year's $10,000 fish. The folks who run the Mack Days apparently have a sense of humor.
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The weather predictions for Flathead Lake were for cool, calm weather with a little rain yesterday, so I went kayak fishing. The actual weather was cold and windy, with continuous hard rain. Big waves marched by me, generated in the 20 miles of open lake to the north of where I was fishing. When the rain turned to snow and the wind ramped up, I decided to head for home.
There are 586 anglers signed up for the Mack Days lake trout fishing derby, but Cindy Benson, who runs the derby, told me that only me and three other anglers turned in lake trout on April 9. So there were only four of us who were dumb enough to go out in the lousy weather.
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Cool pictures - both sets!
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Damn! That looks cold.
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As I fished today, many snow squalls moved across Flathead Lake, but didn't include enough wind or waves to interfere with a good morning of fishing.
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An advantage of the Mack Days lake trout derby is that if you catch a lot of fish, you don't have to take them all home and spend all night processing them. You can keep just a couple and turn the rest of them in, and the Tribes will process the fish you turn in and give them to food banks. But on April 25 I missed the deadline for turning in fish, and had to take 21 lake trout home. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you way too many lake trout, smoke a bunch of them.
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The weather prediction was for light wind on Flathead Lake, so I headed up for some more lake trout fishing. But in the morning the wind was blowing hard, and big waves were barreling down the lake. I had to pedal hard to hold myself stationary over the bottom. I quickly caught 5 lake trout, but the waves started getting excessively rowdy, with crests with a period of about 2 seconds rising above the level of the horizon with whitecaps. After several waves broke over the bow and poured back into the cockpit of my Revolution, about 9:15 I headed back to the launch site. I moved my fish into a big cooler in my vehicle, and hung out for about an hour and a half until the wind decreased, the water flattened out, and the whitecaps disappeared.
After lunch the lake was flat and calm, as predicted. I caught another ten lake trout, including a 33 inch hog. I ran out of space in my cooler, and had to drag the three biggest fish back to the launch site behind my kayak. That didn't damage the quality of the meat, because the water temperature was 36 degrees F.
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Damn Pete you got some big trout over there!
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Nice. The smoked fish probably makes you many friends. Good on you. We may be thru there this summer.
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We may be thru there this summer.
Look me up. If you come through in July or August, the lake whitefish bite may be on, which is a ton of fun.
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Great report(s) - thanks!