It has been a long winter…well at least for my father and me since we love open water fishing so much. So when we saw the nice weather coming, we thought we’d get the boat out. It may have been a bit early being right after the cold front and seeing as there was still snow on my lawn in Bozeman.
Nonetheless, we ventured to Canyon Ferry today to start the season. We saw a lot of fish on the depth finder, caught 4, but only got 2 to bite.
How is that you say? We managed to catch a 13” walleye and a small trout the normal ways. But the two biggest fish we caught in non- traditional ways.
We saw something moving along the top of the water. We investigated and realized it was a giant walleye! It was moving slow so we got the net out and netted her. She released some eggs in the boat and we couldn’t see any injury or other issues so we released her back into the lake. She swam off, but we saw her near the surface a short while later. Likely something was off with her being at the surface like that, but it was still a neat experience bringing this 14 lb, 31” long, 18.5” girth walleye into the boat. And now I know there are walleye that big in there. 🙂
The second large fish was this 15 lb carp that I accidentally snagged using a swim bait as you can see in the picture. The placement of the snag created quite a challenge to bring the fish in with very little leverage. But again, another great story.
So all in all, a wonderful day on the water as usual. It’s always fun to see what will be pulled from the depths.
Happy fishing.
