Snowy day inland adventure

[John Pensyl]

Set off this am with the plan to fish Cassi in the am for a couple hours and drive to Chautauqua mid day and fish til dark.  The further south I got the heavier the snow got.  There was a good 4 inches at the launch at Cassi and air temps were 26 degrees with a strong wind.    We knew the docks would be gone so I had my buddy Dave launch me out into the lake and then he went and jumped the bridge rail down to the platform and climbed into the boat. 

Water temp was down to 40 deg in most spots with spots as low as 38.  We didn't mark much in the lilydale lake or the middle lake except a few small musky hooks near the mouths, but the big lake was loaded with big hooks.  Problem was they were all in 45+ fow in the bottom 10 feet.   Are those even muskies???  There were tons of them and the hooks were massive.  I tried trolling all over all 3 lakes and then resorted to jigging to the big hooks in crazy deep water.  One by one my reels failed, different parts would freeze solid on each one.  Anti reverse likes to freeze on revos, as well as the part that engages the reel after a cast.  Drags froze on my diawa 47lcs, one of them just froze solid from the wet line.  Another 6 inches or so of snow fell while we were there which made it fun sliding around the boat trying to keep it shoveled out.  The wind and snow pummeled us all am and finally we decided enough was enough.  Loaded Dave back up on to the bridge, stabbed the boat on to the trailer and spun our way up the ramp.  Decided to call it a day since the roads seemed shot and most of the gear needed a good thaw. It was funny, as we came down off the hill tops the snow accumulation was cut by 90% and temps kept going up.  Looks like we called it perfect today.

Funniest part is, I had a blast.  One of the best adventures I've had in a while, didn't catch a thing, lake confused me to say the least.  Its a whole diff beast then it is in the summer, no thermocline keeping the fish pinned to the surface like im used to.  I have no idea where they were unless those big hooks were really all of the muskies super deep.  Should of swam down and found out.

[Josh Ketry]

hardcore

[Capt. Larry D. Jones]

Wow! I got all the snow I wanted while up in the Harbor yesterday.Your even more hardcore then I am. I will spend this morning vacuuming snow from the boat and then place two ceramic heaters inside under a covered boat to be dry and ready for tomarrow.