Great catches as always by the NJ Fishing members.
2020 was a great year fishing wise for me. Started off with a monster bucket mouth during the 4 day ice season. During the lockdown I had my hours cut and I was out every day on the big pond in the yak trying to forget the world was ending. Once I could get the boat on the lake we hit the night ops pretty hard catching eyeballs and hybrids. NY opened up just in time for my annual 2 week vacation chasing brownies in Lake George. Spent the summer and early fall targeting pike, lakers and harassing bass. November had to be my best month of fishing ever catching a monster smallmouth, PB hybrid, PB laker, and PB Crappie all within 10 days of each other.
All in all I caught 7 NJ Skillful Angler fish (6 different species), qualifying for the Master Angler Award and the Bass Slam.
The most memorable fish hands down is the Lake Trout I caught aboard the Essential in early November. We got to the lake at sunup to troll, after 4 hours of nothing switched over to blading, after 2 hours of nothing we switched to jigging. They were being picky as all hell and I started to doze off staring at the fish finder. After almost dropping my rod in the water I told Chris to wake me up when they start biting and curled up in a little ball sucking my thumb in front of the boat. After an 8 minute power nap I get woken up by Chris saying he was on. I jumped up to net his fish, then proceeded to shoot a 5 hour energy, drop my jig to the bottom, and hook up with something
huge! The fish made multiple runs to the bottom and put the drag to the test. When it was finally in the net Chris mumbles in a defeated low voice "It's #$%^& huge dude". The fish taped out at 33" and is the biggest lake trout that Chris or I have ever seen in person. If your only going to catch one fish all day I guess this is the fish you want!
Guess the saying of "Don't Wake A Sleeping Giant" holds true.
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year fellas!
