North Wind, New Camera.

I had the pleasure of fishing with a friend from New Zealand this weekend and gave him a good tour of the lake. We covered tons of water, traveling from Quebec, to New-York State and back to Ontario in the matter of a few hours and we even mixed things up with a little snorkeling for good measure. The water was quite cold however and despite wet suits and good intentions we couldn’t really stay in the water for too long. Mark managed his first Canadian fish and I got to hear him say “walleye” with a Kiwi accent all day. 😉

I was able to test out my new Canon D10 underwater a little. If you are looking for an affordable underwater camera this thing is pretty slick. It’s small, shockproof, waterproof up to 33 feet and has a decent picture quality with 12.1 megapixels. You’ll see that the video is a little shaky but hopefully I can eliminate that with some sort of tripod or extension. I still have to figure that out. I thought it was pretty cool to watch fish swim back home to the depths from underwater. As you can see driftwood and propellers don’t see eye to eye. Also as you can see I clearly need more practice with this new camera.

We battled a strong North wind all day. With my boat being so light it really tends to get pushed around like a cork on windy days. We fought to keep good boat control making things a little tough. To top it off fishing was kind of slow and the walleye were sluggish but we did boat a few fish here and there during the day and did quite well at dawn.

One thing I noticed helps with controlling aluminium boats in the wind is filling your livewell to the brim. When the wind challenges your boat control the extra weight really helps the bow from wanting to swing in the gusts. It also slows down your drift which comes in handy when the fish start hugging bottom and you need to crawl a spinner in front of them. I also make sure I always have a drift sock on board. You can use it when trolling to compensate for cross wind. Just make sure you have it tied to a clip so you can experiment with location with a simple snap. If you don’t want to spend the money on a drift sock a bucket tied to a rope will work too. There are times when there’s nothing you can do however. I remember one really windy day finding sheltered spots and actually seeing fish on bottom from the surface. I literally bounced a jig on top of a fish and he barely flinched. There are days like that.

When the fishing is tough it’s a great time to look for new spots. I enjoyed covering the lake from Valleyfield to Cornwall in a single day. With a backyard this size to play in you never run out of new places to check out. I marked a few new promising spots on the GPS and I can’t wait to get back out there to try them out during better conditions. By the time it was said and done we had an amazing time and while sitting at the bonfire that night my friend from New Zealand had a new perspective on Lake St.Francis and told me “I can see why you love this place”. Indeed, I do.

Until next time, stay outside. Jigger.