Little Apex, Big Bow
by Kevin Kole
(Summerland, B.C.)
Hawg Hunting
5:00 am. Osoyoos bound. Pick up one of only a handful of friends that are still willing to be on the lake for first light in early March. I had talked him into going fishing due to the snow becoming too soft for snowmobiling.
Launched at 6:30. While having a slow morning at the north end of Osoyoos Lake, I decided to guide my buddy Adrian to some waters off the infamous white sands area. The big blue apex that was successful only a week earlier had let me down this sunny spring day.
Adrian put on a small pink apex with a tag of pink maribou tied on the shank, a popular method introduced by our good friend Bruce Garsca, renoun for out fishing everyone, everywhere he went.
Anyways, we started to troll across the lake and as we reached halfway, Adrian gets a hit. Then a moment later a bigger hit, flexing his old school spincaster rod to points I'm sure it had only done with snags previously. A splash followed but there was so much line out it was difficult to tell what he had hooked into.
I killed the motor and proceeded to reel in. Adrian straightened out his bird's nest that formed almost immediatly as the line on the rod was well trolled and was in desperate need of replacement. It didn't help that this fish decided to run straight at the boat. Hindsight told me to keep the motor running and thus the line tension.
It swam beside the boat as if it didn't even know it was hooked as we called "ooooooooooh" in unison. It finally ran but not far as Adrian's drag didn't work very well either. Borderline horsing, he lead her up the side of the boat and I successfully netted the beauty. This fish deserved to be released. Almost immediately the bow showed no fatigue and dove straight back to the depths from where it came. How can we convince our wives to let us go again next weekend?
Show them the pictures!
