One Thousand Islands, One Million Rocks
February 4, 2009
I was without a boat at this past season’s 1,000 Islands Stren tournament. FYI, the 1000 Islands refers to the east end of Lake Ontario. I'd never been to 1000 Islands and didn’t want to miss the opportunity, so I moved myself from the boater waiting list to a non-boater.
I've fished as a co-angler before and it’s not my favorite thing to do, but looking back on the event, I feel I made the most of the situation I was in. Besides, I’d already paid for the lodging and at least I’d get to pre-fish with my son, Joe. Any day I can fish with my kid is one more day on this earth that brings me great joy. What does suck are times I see him struggle trying to put something together. Joe had been on the Lake two previous times and both times had shown great promise for deep smallmouth, unfortunately for him this was not going to be a deep smallmouth tournament.
One of the practice days we ran some crazy rough water trying to reach the offshore islands, about twenty miles from the river. We pulled up in the vicinity of the islands and started whacking deep smallmouth. Unfortunatelythe deep smallmouth abandoned the spot for Joe's tournament days.
Day One
Back to my co-angling adventures: on Day One I fished with a guy I’d met while hanging around the service trailers waiting to get some equipment repaired. At first glance, I may not be the co-angler a boater is going to be excited about if he recognizes me. Nevertheless, the first thing I try to instill in my boaters is that I respect their position in the boat. When my partner explained his game plan for the next day I thought I would hurt myself from smiling so much - he said we would be fishing for smallmouth on humps and largemouth around mats. Did I say that made me happy? Oh right, I already mentioned that.
We started out on his smallmouth spot and he was surprised no one else was there. Cool. He must have thought the place was loaded and others had found out about it. The first thing I noticed was that he shut down his depthfinder at the console so I couldn’t see what was going on under the boat. Nice move, done it myself. He was doing well.
I dropped a nice fish - not good. It was getting sunny and the wind was non-existent. Why wasn’t he moving to the mats with these conditions? It was late morning and the smallmouth bite had turned off. Finally, I thought, we're going mat fishing. This is something I like and as a co-angler it gives me a chance to fish without getting in the boater’s way. He started flippin’ mats and I picked up a frog. The place we were in had thick mats up against the bulrushes and little patches of lily pads and a sporadic amount of mats away from the shoreline. It wasn’t long before a toad jumped all over my frog. Unfortunately, he came off, but my boater took notice and asked, “What the hell are they doing out there?” Not my bad, I was just trying to stay away from his action.
I think that got into his brain a little and he started trying to do two things at once but it's impossible to flip shoreline mats and frog fish on offshore floating stuff. He caught a few, but seemed unhappy. He explained that during pre-fish the wind had blown more mats into the area but today was not that good. As we moved down a different shoreline there was a beautiful willow tree, semi uprooted, hanging in the water. He flipped under the tree a half dozen times without any action and started to move away from the tree, all the while still flippin’.
I was drooling to get a chance to skip my frog under that tree. I saw he was moving on so I skipped the frog in a couple of times. Son of a gun if he didn’t stop flippin’ his jig, back the boat up and skip his frog under the tree while offering he didn’t skip his frog that well. After a few moments we moved on and I could tell I was having a slight effect on his decision making. He was more interested in what I was doing than his own activities. All the better for me.
We moved back out to the original smallmouth spot. He said something about feeling bad about me not having any fish and I mentioned that maybe, just maybe, if he’d left his depthfinder on I may have had a better chance. Without a word he left the bow, returned to the console and turned the unit back on. Maybe it was about respect, maybe he felt bad for the old man, who’s to say? The squeaky wheel got the grease. Oh man, I saw a fish on the screen, dropped down on it and bingo – got ‘em! My boater had a nice limit of 15 lbs. and I had a whopping 1 lb. fish. Tournaments can’t be won on the first day, but damned if they can be lost on the first day. I figured I was toast, but this was a lake that could give up some big fish, particularly to co-anglers, so…we’ll see.
Day Two
On Day Two I drew a young gentleman who planned to fish for largemouth the entire day. Cool with me. We started fishing very close to French Creek (the take off area). He caught a couple of fish in the first few minutes and headed off to another spot. He told me he had a milk run around the area that would take the day. What I forgot to mention was his first day co-angler was my co-angler on Champlain at the last Stren tournament - small world. His first day co was all smiles at weigh-in and proudly showed me a 5½ lb. largemouth which I believe was his only fish. The boater told the story that when he was culling and drifting down a weedline his co caught that fish - heartbreaking.
Day Two found us both using a Senko; his with a 1/8th oz. bullet weight sliding on his rig and mine weightless. Sometime during the day I asked for and received a 1/8th oz. bullet 
weight. As a co-angler you can only carry so much stuff and I never thought I would need such a small weight. My bad.
Someone had the right idea when they called this place 1000 Islands – it’s loaded with islands of all sizes, some with a single mansion while others are so large they have their own fire department. We fished weeds in current, exclusively. My boater had a nice limit and needed a kicker. He tried the spot where his co caught the toad the day before, but he never returned after trying it first thing in the morning. Hmmm. We fished a small cove with docks off the main river. He was culling then and I only had two small fish.
If I didn’t mention it earlier, I believe that the truest test of a co-angler’s skill is to catch a limit, regardless of size. If the moons are aligned, maybe even cull. As the day progressed I could see my skills were being challenged - I had only two small fish.
As we came around the end of the aforementioned cove my boater caught a nice 2½ and needed to cull. As the boat swung into the current along a weedline I threw a Senko into an opening in the weeds and felt a tap. The tap didn’t feel any different than a thousand other taps I've felt. I was using either 8 or 10 lb. test (can’t remember)with a fluorocarbon leader on braided line on a spinning reel. With the current I felt the fish move out of the weeds and then back in – that’s when I realized it was a goodun’. Then we saw the fish. Holy crap it was a toad and digging into the weeds directly below the boat!
For some unknown reason the fish stopped digging into the weeds and came up sideways next to the boat. I know this is the Internet and the censorship may not be as stringent as other media outlets, but you probably don’t want to know what was being said right about then, by me or my boater. The fish was huge and to get it in the boat with that line around the weeds and current required some skill. I hoped I had a little left. Did I mention the fish weighed in at 6 lbs.?
Now my boater, the poor b***ard, not only had his first day co-angler catch lunker of the day, he was watching his second day co-angler landing a beautiful fish. It would have been his next cast had he not caught that other largemouth. I tried to express to him how bad I felt. I'm serious when I say it's a truer sign of a skilled angler to catch a limit than one that catches a big fish. I told him all I wanted on this day was a limit to make me feel good about myself.
After the tournament we looked at the final standings; the two fish caught by his co-anglers would have put him in the cut. Ladies and gentlemen that sucks. Not to mention a big shining moment for me would have been to cash a lunker check and offset some of my financial burden. Nope, a gentleman brought in a 6.7 lb. smallmouth for Day Two lunker. Day Three couldn’t come soon enough.
Day Three
On Day Three I fished with a seasoned veteran of the sport (much like myself) who loves to fish for smallmouth, something he said we would be doing. What caught me off guard was how shallow we would be fishing. I'm being derelict in my duties as a writer to not paint a picture in words about how rough it was on that day. Let me say operating the boat under those conditions seemed more beneficial than just trying to hang on for dear life. You have a feel for the next wave; did I mention big waves? No? Well those bad boys were blowing from the west southwest on a lake that runs west to east. In addition, we were fishing on the east side of the lake.
The problem with the waves and their size was that we were fishing shallow and the energy from the waves built in the shallow water so the waves seemed closer together. Every wave was a four footer, then every fifth wave would climb to about five plus, and then there would be the holy s*~t waves. We finally arrived on our spot, beat up, and immediately started seeing big smallmouth in three feet of water!
Stay with me here…
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We were fishing in four-footers starting our drift in six feet
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There was a 20 mph breeze (I’m saying breeze instead of gale trying too show a sense of humor on my part)
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We ended our drift in about four feet of water
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We were catching three to five-pound smallmouth.
It felt like I could touch the bottom at any time I had the urge. Fortunately, I never felt that urge. My boater had a unique technique for getting those fish. He’d cast a reaction bait (spinnerbait or trap) to provoke a strike, mostly short-striking fish. After a short strike he’d throw his tube in there and bingo, he’d catch a real corker. The problem was he’d have to fight the waves and wind to keep us off the rocks, big rocks, rocks that had HURT written all over them.
He seemed to know what he was doing, all while looking like we were conducting a Chinese fire drill. I skunked, but it was worth it to learn a new technique. Although learning a new technique is a good thing, getting the chance to use it's equally important. Again stay with me here:
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The boater decided to parallel the shoreline in about six feet of water.
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No problem.
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Or, no problem just so long as you don’t…anyone, anyone want to raise your hand and tell me what not to do? That’s right – you do not want to turn the boat around to work a fish you just saw.
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He turns the bow into the waves and that’s when I knew it wasn’t going to be good.
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Two waves caught us and moved us 30-feet toward shore with those rocks with HURT written all over ‘em.
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We took two waves over the bow and the boat went sideways with the waves now at the side of the boat (this is where it got dangerous). One good wave and we’d roll over in three- feet of water - not a lot of room under a boat that rolls in these conditions.
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He yelled something to me from the bow while he hung onto the pedestal seat. I couldn’t quite make out what he has said, but it didn’t make sense. I yelled for him to repeat himself and this time there was no mistake. I can only paraphrase what he said but it was like, “Start the engine I can’t get back there.”
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I run a Ranger with push-button starting and I forgot his boat had a key. It wasn’t on the dash. WHAT?! I literally threw myself over the driver’s seat, found the key, and started the engine.
We were cooking now - wrong:
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The engine was only idling and needed a little throttle. I never mentioned - never thought I would need to - that he had a hot foot gas pedal. I had to get into the driver’s seat properly.
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I decided that the engine needed to be trimmed down, as we were bouncing around pretty good. All the while we're being pummeled with big waves and we're now in less than two feet of water and it's getting really interesting.
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Did I mention the trim switch? Unfortunately for me his trim switch was on the opposite side of the boat - I started to lift the jackplate instead of the trim, pulling the prop further out of the water, lifting the already elevated engine.
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BANG! There was that bottom I could have touched earlier.
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BANG! The boat hit the rocks again, and the prop was spinning in the breeze.
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Finally it was time to do or die. I throttled up while lowering the trim, hitting the prop or skag – didn’t really care much at the time what I was hitting or what was hitting it – we just had to get the hell out of there.
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It took about 30 minutes, or so it seemed, when in actuality it was probably about a minute. We were finally safe and the discussion revolved around the damage to the boat and engine. He was pretty cool about the damage, but I'll tell you we didn’t try that technique for the rest of the day.
As I write this, and think back about the day’s events, my fishing skills were the least of my problems. My getting skunked on the third day seems a little trivial in hindsight.
I'll leave you with this thought. Both Co-anglers and Pros alike should respect the person in the other end of the boat; ‘cause someday that may be the only person available to save your bacon.