Fishing New Brunswick: French Lake

Yesterday I had a fantastic day at French Lake withCasey and James. Casey asked if James and I wanted to go fishing at French Lake. After we bothquickly said yes we had the plans made. Casey picked me up at 5:40 am and then we got James and were on the road. We arrived and got the boaready and were on the water by 7:45.

It was a beautiful morning with no wind.....I repeat no wind!!! We started our way going up the lake. We did some trolling and casting to the edge of the lake where grass and lily pads were growing. We made our way to some bigger patches our lily pads and started to get some strikes from some pickerel. As we continued our way up the lake Casey caught the first pickerel of the day while trolling....he is the trolling king, as he catches many fish using this strategy.


We made our way to one spot of the lake that was a dead end. It was very calm and full of lily pads. We got into some very action and we each must have pulled in two or three pickerel each. When we finished with this spot we continued moving around the lake catching and also getting many hits as we tried different lily pads.

I would say by 11am or so the dreaded wind started to pick up. We started looking for spots to get out of the wind but everywhere we went to it seemed like the wind was always in our face and disturbing the water. By noon it was really windy but we did not let in and continued fishing. Our experience with pickerel fishing is they usually turn off when it gets windy but luckily for us we were still able to catch some pickerel at certain spots. We also spent some time trolling for pickerel and perch. We caught 18 perch while trolling. Some of the perch were a good size.

As the day wore one we continued to look for little coves to get out of the wind. We were able to find a few that gave us a little relief from the wind and James caught the biggest pickerel of the day. It was 24 1/2 inches long and was quite heavy.

When we decided to call it a day we decided to troll back to the boat launch. We each caught a few perch and Casey caught another pickerel.

We kept count of the fish we caught during the day for some bragging-rights fun. By the end of the day James landed 7 perch and 14 pickerel, I caught 4 perch and 12 pickerel, and Casey caught 7 perch and 7 pickerel.

I tried many different lures during the day but James and I had the best luck with the pickerel using a red 6 inch senko Gary Yamamoto Original 5" Senko Worm Color: Fading Watermelon w/Black (194J). I also tried different colored worms. I used a skitter pop, hula popper, rubber frogs and some swimming hard baits. I also used two rods throughout the day.  One was with a spin cast reel and the other one was with a bait casting reel.  I have been using the bait casting reel more.  I am getting better with it fishing from a boat as I find casting from a boat with it is much different than walking a river and fishing with it. Strikeforce SF100SH Baitcasting Reel

As I continue to look around for a 14 foot boat to buy it was really nice to go out on Casey's 16 foot aluminum boat. He has it rigged up very nicely. He made storage areas and even has a cd player so we could listen to music while fishing.

It was a fantastic day with two great fishing buddies!
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