DAY 1
We ended up leaving early on a Saturday morning since the
night before was Brittany's birthday celebration. We loaded up the grey whale
and headed north. About 10 miles outside of Sutton, Kevin’s truck started to
lose power like it wasn’t getting enough gas, and then the motor started
thumping really loud. We quickly pulled over at the top of the hill and
realized, the truck was out of commission.
This was extremely frustrating because Kevin’s truck was fairly
new with only 30k miles on it. It was recently in the shop getting tuned up and
some warranty issues repaired. As frustrating as a broken down truck is, we
soon found out that actually getting it towed through insurance or the dealer
warranty program would prove far more frustrating.
To make a long story short, it took us over 3 hours simply
get someone out to tow us. Within those three hours, we spent countless hours
on the phone with both USAA and the dealership warranty department trying to
figure what was covered, navigating stupid automated systems, telling them how
to find our location, and explaining the issue. We had to repeat ourselves numerous
times, try to tell a non-Alaskan there is no town near us and how to find us, and
request to speak with supervisors of incompetent employees. The entire hassle
resulted in us not even getting approved to be towed back to the dealership,
one company inappropriately authorizing a pickup, another company not sending a
tow or doing what they said they would, and one extremely helpful tow truck
driver. We ended working out a deal where we paid the tow truck driver cash
under the table to take the truck (left the trailer on the side of the road) to
Anchorage, and drop us off at the Eagle River exit.
We had Danielle pick us up on the side of the road and drop
us off at Kevin’s house. Our plan was to take his neighbor’s 1-ton truck,
pickup the trailer, and resume our trip. We couldn’t take my truck because it
wasn’t big enough to pull the load we had in the enclosed trailer. We also
debated staying the night in town since we were now 6 hours behind schedule. We
decided to still try to get in before dark.
The trip in the alternate truck went flawlessly. We picked
up the trailer and headed to the trail head. The ride in was fairly smooth.
There was a bunch of overflow along the trail but nothing impassable. The lake itself
had pleasantly good riding conditions. There was only about 6 inches of snow on
the lake due to how windy it was throughout the winter. Even if there was
overflow on the ice, it had no where to hide or really the ability to result in
getting a snowmachine stuck.
We got to our camping spot well before dark, but we still
had a lot of work to do to setup our gear. Although there was little snow on
the lake, the edge of the lake is where most of the wind blown snow collected.
We had to shovel off a 16 by 16 foot area to put our tent on. Although this
took a ton work, we learned from prior trips that it makes the stay substantially
more enjoyable to have a solid base to camp on.
It was around dusk by the time our tenting home was all setup
and we shifted to setting up the fishing gear. The wind was blowing pretty
good, so we had to strategically place the ice shanty. Typically, we drill the
holes first, move the hut over top of the holes, and then secure it. Often times
this doesn’t work out the best with the wind blowing like crazy so we decided
to try something different and set the shanty up first, and then drill the
holes…. Well I’m not sure why we ever did it differently. This way worked
amazingly. We weren’t struggling with readjustments or a hut turning into a
kite. It even resulted in more open area within the shanty since we could drill
the holes to precise distances from the outside of the hut, as well as guy out
the middles to give more inner area. Due to the late start, we didn’t really
have time to set the tip ups up for the night, nor were we really planning on
it anyway.
We knew the wind would likely be crazy, so we secured it as
tight and as best as we could. We used a total of 14 ice anchors to keep it in
place (note – we brought a drill for the first time and using that to drive the
ice anchors is a game changer… will never leave home without one again).
Burbot come up from the deep water and prowl the shallows at
night looking to feed. We typically jig in 4-8 feet of water, close to shore,
from dusk to whenever we get tired. The fishing the first night wasn’t as good
as we hoped. We marked a few fish here and there, and I landed three burbot,
however, we got kind of spoiled from the previous year of catching a fish about
every 10 minutes that a night full of fishing and only landing three fish was a
little disappointing. But that’s alright, we needed a reality check after the
previous year’s incredible bite.
The one difference between fishing this year and prior years
was the weather. It was around 30 degrees and would never get below 20 for the
entire trip. This meant we would have a chance to clean the fish on the lake,
instead of having them freeze solid and be forced to take them home whole. Taking
them home whole, frozen isn’t really a big deal, however, burbot can only be
defrosted once or the meat gets ruined after it is cooked. That means cleaning
them on the lake is ideal because instead of taking up a bunch of room in the freezer,
and needing to defrost a day before cutting them up… All of that will be done already.
Now, to make sure this was doable, we had to make sure our caught fish didn’t
freeze. That ended up not being a problem with the warm, rainy weather. We simply
buried our catch under the snow to both keep them cool and insulate them from
the outside temps.
We called it a night a little after midnight. Our plan was
to wake up early and try to find some Lake Trout throughout the day by testing
Kevin’s newest toy (a mobile, pop-up ice hut built into a towable sled).
Turns out, we weren’t wrong about the wind. That night it
got so bad, the side of our tent was slapping us on the face. I had to move my
cot in from the walls to avoid the wind movement. I also wasn’t able to sleep
fearing we would wake up and the ice hut would be gone, with all of our gear
inside spread out across the lake.
DAY 2
Well we got a little sleep in between the aggressive
flapping of the tent and subsiding fear of something blowing away or falling on
us. Luckily, a peak out the tent and in the direction of the ice shanty showed
everything still in place! The weather looked like it was going to do exactly
what it was predicted to do for our entire trip… be cloudy, windy, with the
occasional rain, and hover in the high 30s/low 40s during the day.
The plan for the day was to make Swiss cheese of the lake
and look for lake trout, ideally monster lake trout. We first tried a bunch of
holes near our tent. We marked a couple lake trout on the flashers, but I caught
only one medium sized fish. We then tried to find some other areas further away
from the tent. After trying many spots in different depths of water and not
connecting with anything, we decided to head out to the really deep water. On
our way, we passed a pace where the shore came to a point and there were many
holes already drilled in that area. Since it was warm enough that the ice holes
wouldn’t freeze over too much, we simply kicked in a couple to check the
depths. To our surprise, many of the drill holes were in water depths deeper
than we expected, showing a clear drop off in the lake. Because of this, we
decided to fish in this area for a while.
Not long after we got settled into fishing, I marked a large
fish on my flasher, looking at my resting jighead. I picked up my pole and the
fish hammered the bait. I played with him for a few seconds before I realized
it was a pretty big fish. I haven’t caught many big lake trout in my life, but after
about 5 minutes of reeling it in, this was the first time my wrist was starting
to hurt from landing a fish through the ice.
I called Kevin over to help because a lake trout of any size
needs pulled out of the water, not lifted by the pole and line. It took another
couple minutes after he arrived for us to finally catch a glimpse of the fish. That’s
when added excitement starts, knowing you have a large fish on the line, and
finally getting to see how close it will be to fitting through the hole.
I finally turned his head upward to start the final pull
through the ice. As he breached the water level, Kevin reached down and
immediately scoped him up and tossed him onto the ice. Typically if a fish does
come off while reeling them in, it’s often right at the ice hole due to the added
weight of gravity, hard ice walls to knock the hook loose, and the close
quarters to can cause thrashing.
These fish take a very long time to grow big and we want to
be especially cautious to prevent any damage or hurt their chances of survival.
We both knew we had to be quick to get
it back in the water. I had to remove the hook quickly, get some pictures, and
get it back in the water with oxygen flowing again before I could release it. We
made quick work of the tasks and the brute was back to swimming with its
buddies before we knew it.
Unfortunately, that was the only fish we caught from that
spot. We stayed about an hour longer, but decided to head back toward the tent
around 5 in order to setup the tip-ups for the night and get ready for some
serious burbot fishing.
I had an underwater camera with me, but unfortunately, the clarity
was too dirty in the deep water to use it for lakers, so we wanted to see if it
was too dark at night to use it for burbot. We set it up in the ice hut to play
around with it and use it whenever. Unfortunately, it soon proved unusable at
night too.
Once dusk came, we headed back into the ice hut for another
night of jigging. The Buddy Heater was fired up and we threw on our meats to
start grilling while we fished. There wasn’t much action on the rods, but the
tip ups outside kept us fairly busy running to them to check the line (half the
time the wind was to blame for popped flags). That night ended with only a
handful of fish caught again. Kevin caught most of the burbot while I only landed
one.
DAY 3
This was our last full day of fishing. The plan was the same
as the day prior, to try to find some lake trout. We started out again in front
of the tent. We marked many fish, but couldn’t get one to bite. Since it was
daylight, we decided to look through the underwater camera. To our surprise, we
could actually see lake trout in the 5 feet of water swimming among the
shallows. The odd thing was, every time they would get within 10 feet of out
jig, and then see it move, they would get spooked and swim away. After we
realized this, we stopped jigging and let the jig sit there. Upon closer look,
we noticed the fish weren’t lake trout at all… that they were actually whitefish!!
Whitefish are THE PREFERRED bait fish for lake trout and
burbot. They are very hard to come by because they can’t be purchased anymore
and they are very picky biters. We did not realize we have been sitting on AM
whitefish all these years and never once tried to fish for or target them!
Luckily, we had some small hooks and waxie Powerbait to try and catch them
with. They weren’t too interested though. It turns out, we actually had one whitefish
bite the bait when we weren’t in the ice hut (which eventually got off the
line), and another when we were watching them on the camera. I quickly reeled
it in, and we officially landed our very first whitefish ever! It’s not a big
fish by any means, but it is as good as gold when it comes to bait. Admittedly,
we were probably as excited to catch that whitefish as we were to land the big
laker the day prior. We now know they are around our Burbot jigging spot in the
morning, and we will definitely target them better on future trips!
We eventually ventured off looking for other spots to fish. We
made sure to head back to the point where I caught the large lake trout. Nothing
was biting again in the same holes we fished the day earlier, so we spread out
a little bit. I ended up landing another descent lake trout in the area, and
marking many others, but not many hookups to brag about.
We then decided to try a spot that was more in the middle of
the lake that we saw a couple holes drilled at during our ventures to other
spots. Immediately upon fishing, we started marking handfuls of fish on the
bottom. Again, nothing would really bite. For some reason, the fish were really
tight lipped. We enticed many fish at this spot to follow our baits, but only
convinced one to bite. He wasn’t too big either. We definitely marked this spot
for future jigging though.
We headed back to our tenting area around the same time
again. By this time with the recent above freezing temperatures and rain that
was hitting us for the past couple days, the snow covered ice was becoming slush
covered ice. This also resulted in many of our ice anchors being uprooted and
having to be reset (good thing that didn’t happen overnight when it was windy).
It was another night of jigging glow in the dark lures,
listening to music, grilling on the Buddy Heater, and drinking beer and whiskey.
The burbot bite on this night turned out to be a little better. I lost count of
how many we landed, but it was easily the best night for catching burbot. Kevin
caught the most burbot that night, and I refused to catch anything on something
different than my glow spoon (which likely resulted in me catching less fish,
but I was being stubborn).
The only thing we didn’t get to experience while we were out
there this time was the northern lights. The lights usually always come out to
play during this fishing trip and of course, the trip where Kevin brought his
good camera and equipment, the weather didn’t cooperate.
DAY 4
This was the day we were headed home. We don’t fish on this
day because it’s a full day of tearing down, riding out, driving home, and
unpacking. Added to that list of things to do this time was cleaning the fish.
The weather on the last day took a turn for the better. The
skies were clear and the sun was coming out. It was supposed to get in the
upper 40s. That combined with the blasting sun meant it would be a warm and
slushy day.
The first thing on our to-do list was to cut up the burbot. We
dug up the buried fish and arranged them for pictures (see below). After the
photo-op we drove into the woods to stay out of the sun while cleaning the
fish. Although burbot are cleaned similar to catfish using a skin puller, Kevin
and I chose different methods. I nailed them to a tree and worked from a
standing position, while Kevin built a ditch and bench shelf out of snow to
work from. We made quick work of the fish and filled 4 single gallon bags with
fillets.
It was starting to get warm by this time so we quickly tore
everything down, packed it in our sleds, and headed out. We wanted to get back
before the weather deteriorated the snow conditions too terribly, but by the
time we left, there was already pools of water everywhere. Luckily, the snow
pack was only 6” deep so there weren’t many areas where we would get stuck in
overflow (deep water under snow).
Midway across the lake, Kevin’s machine started overheating.
When he popped his hood, he discovered his antifreeze was gone. Although he had
a fan machine, it still needed cooled by antifreeze. Luckily, Kevin had extra
antifreeze with him and as soon as he added it, his machine cooled down. Just
to be sure the extra weight from towing a second sled wasn’t contributing to
the overheating, I took Kevin’s second sled and added it to the back of mine. Kevin
didn’t have any issues the rest of the ride back.
The ride out was nicer than we thought. It was a little wet,
and we were very hot in our gear, but the snow was fine for riding.
We got back to the truck, loaded up, and headed home…
without any truck issues. Another Crosswinds trip was in the books!
Here's the first picture of the trip... the pickup on the tow truck
Can you tel how happy we are to finally be in the tow truck 4 hours after we broke down?
We got dropped off on the off-ramp to have Danielle pick us up while the truck was taken to Anchorage.
Sunrise on the last day of our trip.
This is the best use of the heater. We didn't use to do this, but why not warm up some food while warming up the hut!? It's a nightly ritual now.
Fishing in luxury... an under water camera, a flasher, and jaw jacker.
Home sweet home for four days.
This is our fishing shanty about 200 yards away from our tent. I guess it's fairly wind proof.
Here's the big lake trout I landed. It didn't seem too long, but this thing was super thick and heavy.
A top view.
Kevin's first burbot of the trip.
This is a school of fish along the bottom in the distance... we thought they were lake trout until we realized how wrong we were.
WHITEFISH!!!
Just a little guy, but a huge victory.
So we couldn't figure out how to get the delay timer on my camera app to work and after we got home and looked at the pictures, we noticed this funny selfie.
The line-up.
Looking good.
Burbot selfie.
The burbot are distracting from the true attraction of this picture.
Amazed!
And there's a good smiling picture with our catch.
We decided to take one of Ashton's action figures to make some of the pictures look like we caught a giant fish. They came out fairly well. This one is with a burbot.
Top view with a whitefish.
Riding the whitefish with burbot in the background.
Side view with the big lake trout.
Here is our view driving home on the last day. The weather was gorgeous.
More views of the mountains.
