I still haven't mounted the permanent rod holder I picked up.
I've been using Yankee ingenuity aka a milk crate with my old plastic holders drilled into the sides to get the job done. I do like the open access to the milk crate too for stuff that can get wet like tackle bags etc, and it's a simple catch-all that can be removed after an outting and hosed off.
Father's day weekend I trailered the skiff to northern VT / lake Champlain to the camp my grandfather bought in the early 80s. We've always entered the tournament that occurs annually on father's day weekend, the LCI father's day derby. It is the send off of "opening day" the first day you can catch and keep smallmouth bass which is probably the "flagship" species of the lake (at least in my opinion). The tournament lasts 3 days, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. At it's height there was probably around 5,000 registrants and you wouldn't know it because the lake is 490 square miles, or about 37% the size of LIS.
It feels like the sound too, there is current due to constricted water ways and steep watersheds that fill the various parts of the lake at different rates, obviously nothing like tidal currents but accounts for why so many ATVs and sleds go thru the ice each year. It also gets mean quickly, glass calm to a 4' chop in 30 mins, which I've experienced many times over the past 30 years.
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Saturday morning I checked the forecast and saw a nice opportunity to pound some chop and get in the lee of an island for northern pike, which would let up around 1 pm and allow for a move after. My Uncle Anthony joined us for this trip and he was my mate for the day. He hadn't fished much since his teens and I just said "you're gonna catch fish." No other boats made the move I did so we had about a mile stretch to ourselves. The skiff felt like a godsend and allowed me to get there easily when typically I'd have been in my old 14' aluminum. We spent an hour without luck casting which seemed odd to me, so we went into a troll mode. I used the electronics to weave a weed line and Ant's first fish was a decent 33" pike that went 8lbs on the scale. His next fish was an 11lb pike on the scale and I was ecstatic to share that with him. All the equipment was my own so I knew he had a decent fish with the drag pulling out like it did.
My goal, which didn't come to fruition was to troll a plug i made in deeper water for pike but they just didn't want any standard type crankbaits. They wanted the thump of oversized spinner baits. I had caught some decent fish on it last year but not one for this trip.
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