I had to set my rods aside for 5 weeks to come back enough to hit the water after my date with the knife. I was going stir crazy. At the worst of it, I was also pretty certain that my open water streak would end in January 2020. With free time on my hands when I was laid up , I decided to review my records to see what the streak would look like if the curtain came down after the trout and salmon I caught in early December 2019. What follows is a summary of how things looked. I am stubborn and chippy, but not super skilled. So, I believe that this will provide a good idea of what anyone can do with a year round open water effort. It also provides good info on the cold water species blend and their relative abundance available to shore fishermen .
The streak of at least 1 open water trout or salmon a month in Maine started in April 2011, so as of December 2019 it stood at 105 months. That time period included 621 trips. 5,936 trout and salmon had been caught, including: 3,674 brookies, 1,435 browns, 432 rainbows, 200 splake, 143 landlocks, 51 juvenile atlantic salmon, and 1 fish that I id'ed as a salmon/brown trout hybrid.
I didn't want to give up the streak easily, but the first couple weeks in January were a "no go" for my leg. After that, I could wait no longer to get back into it. I was by no means at full steam, so I relied on Mother Nature's signs to pick my shots.
I always seem to do well when the deer are grazing in the back yard.
Or when this tributary brook is on thaw cycle, I find that the bite is usually on at the confluence with the main river downstream.
I stepped into a winter blitz on my first venture, landing fish on my first 3 casts and on 4 of my first 5 casts. I should have been 5 for 5, but I muffed a net job
. Action like that tends to cool down, but I managed to get into double digits. Here a are a few highlights from that day.
I got out on open water a couple more times in the course of the month. The action was steady, but not frantic. Conditions varied. Flows were up and down, and shelf ice built on the colder days. The docs would have had a fit watching me navigate these currents and quagmires.
But I chipped away.
Often a subtle presentation was needed, with a drift close to the ice shelves. Small jigs were the ticket...sometimes under a bobber, sometimes with a slow swimming retrieve.
On a couple days, I had enough time and stored waypoints to tack on a little hard water jigging to mix things up.
All streaks end, but January didn't get me
February and March are often open water bears. Time will tell.