It sure took long enough but I finally managed to ice my first laker of 2015 this past Saturday. We went to a new spot to me on the south end of the South end of the lake, I had my reservations seeing as I had already been skunked three times so trying a new spot before satisfying the initial craving had me worried. Started out the day trying several spots from 60' up to 95', it was almost noon and I could count the amount of marks I had on one hand. Not looking good and I had to leave at 2:30 so I was getting worried about smelling of skunk for another work week.
Ended up making a km hike to another promising looking spot on the chart and set up shop there. It didn't take long before I started marking some active fish and 10 minutes later I had the first hookup of the day. Having already lost a few fish immediately after the hookset I was determined to get a good hookset on this fish. After a couple of headshakes I grabbed the spool to give a good hookset without any drag letting go, something I have done many times without issue. Unfortunately this time the fish turned to go on a big run right when I did the hookset motion and broke away with my stinger. I could tell by the weight that I lost a good fish, nothing under 10lb can put a bend in my MH rod like this one did.
After that the activity died on the screen and after a few hours of trying to turn whitefish marks into chasing lakers I made my way back to the group. It was after 2pm by the time I made it back to the group and I had pretty much accepted the sunk at that point. I said my goodbyes and decided to give it one last try on the way back to shore in 90' of water. I dropped the swimbait down the hole and didn't mark anything, there was no time to deadstick the bait and wait for fish to come on the screen so I just worked the bait aggressivily up and down the entire water column until an active fish met the bait on the drop 20' off bottom. I closed the bail, reeled aggressively and had my second connection 50' off the bottom.
Finally....