Schedules and weather haven’t been kind toward a trip to Roosevelt lately, but our schedules cleared and weather cooperated so we dressed warm, packed a lunch, and headed for the lake. The drive was fine, but the fog was bad, real bad and with below freezing temps, I was on constant alert for black ice. The pea soup fog stuck around for about 65 of the 78 miles Seven Bays is from our driveway, was so glad to finally drive out of it.

Stopped at our “boat barn” to load our gear and hook up the boat before venturing down to the launch, and once we did, decided it would be prudent to check for ice on the ramp. Found some, but nothing to worry about. Being there were only 3 rigs in the parking lot, few trailers had a chance to drip on the ramp during pullout.

Dunked the boat, parked the truck and trailer, walked back to the dock and fired the motor to let it warm up while I set the camera up on a tripod to take a Christmas Greeting picture. Friends and family will enjoy it in our annual Christmas Letter. ;-)

Once the preliminaries were complete, I motored out of the marina and headed for Lincoln. Decided to start on the shoreline across from Lincoln. As has been the case since Labor Day, we got into them quickly, the first coming immediately after I put the first rod in the holder. Yep, this was going to be a good day. One in the cooler, re-bait, and send it back. This time I get the other 3 rods in the water before we hook up a second time.

Debbie plays this one in while I reel up the long line rigs so we have plenty of room to get it to the boat. While she’s bringing it in, the other leaded line rig had a hit, then her fish crossed over, hit that line, and somehow became tangled in the line. I could see the fish about 25’ back, but Debbie couldn’t reel in any more line, so I reached to start pulling the other line by hand to get her fish close to the boat. As I did, it spit the hook. When I pulled enough line in to reach her fly, I found that trout had managed to wrap a couple loops around one shank of the trailer treble. Some things just make me wonder, and seeing how that hook got wrapped around the other line sure made me wonder.

I get the hook unwrapped, re-baited and ready to go back in the water when I see something on the other rig. Turns out the hit on that rod earlier was actually a hookup, it was still on, and this one found the ice in the cooler.
After this flurry of activity, I decided to leave the mono rigs out of the water. We fished 2 leaded line rigs the rest of our time on the water, and 95 minutes after the first hookup, we put our 10th rainbow in the cooler.

It was cloudy, windy, and cold. We were trolling downwind, so it was brutal on my fingers which got so cold at times I couldn’t feel them. Forecast said winds were supposed to be 3 – 6mph, but they were more like 10 – 15mph.

Trolling speeds were 2.8 – 3.2mph and ran a Frisky Jenny Trick R Treat fly on one rod and a Kekeda Perch fly on the other, both tipped with a piece of crawler. The ‘bows hit each of them consistently and frequently, with no apparent preference. I ran the flies on leaded line 150’ back.

The ‘bows are thick and have really put the feedbag on. The ones we caught yesterday were literally stuffed with Mysis shrimp. They were all 15 3/4” to 16 1/2” and not a single one less than 2lbs. We weighed the fillets just before they went into the brine – 8 1/2lbs worth. Going to be a nice batch of smoked trout. :-)

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