Well we started out in Chattaroy at 3am. We got a good start, we head into the thickest fog you could imagine. On top of that there was a nice layer of black ice on the roads that was melting so it made it that much worse towing a boat. At 6:09 we pulled into the Coulee Playland marina and went in a paid for our launch fee and got the boat on the water. The first time she has been launched since last fall. It felt good to hear the motors fire off. We head across the lake and started playing with the fish finder graphing the bottom to try and find a course that we should troll/drift. We fished to the south of the launch for a couple hours with no luck so we came back up and fished a flat across from the launch that had about 10 other boats on it. I talked to several other people that where fishing it and no one was having any luck but with in a few minutes of getting there I picked up one walleye that was sub legal (16.75"). Over the next hour we fished the flat my dad and buddy used a bottom walker and I used my trusty tube jig. I had a couple more fish pick it up but I missed them, they didn't even get a nibble.
At ten we packed the boat up and decided that the day was young and we should scoot down to Rufus. We had lunch and the boat in the water by 11:30. We set our normal trolling pattern with dodgers and orange wedding rings with no bait along with down riggers and or leaded line. With in about 15 minutes we lost one on the leaded line rod it broke off at one of the knots.
We continued our trolling pattern for the next 4 hours landing several fish one worthy of putting in the cooler. He tipped the scales at just over 12 pounds. We fished the rest of the day, ran the motors hard and just had fun in the 60+ temps that we haven't seen yet this year. Overall a very fun and good day.
I hope you like the series of picks, they are mixed from both Banks and Rufus.
