pmmpete:
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.
bb2fish:
It's a new sport: ski-yak Beautiful day!! Thanks for the photos.
C_Run:
We are not seeing any fish pictures here, Pete. We will take your word it was good.
Mojo Jojo:
--- Quote from: C_Run on April 03, 2019, 02:34:34 PM ---We are not seeing any fish pictures here, Pete. We will take your word it was good.
--- End quote --- Guess he was eating them real fresh!
pmmpete:
--- Quote from: C_Run on April 03, 2019, 02:34:34 PM ---We are not seeing any fish pictures here, Pete. We will take your word it was good.
--- End quote --- 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.