Lake Geneva - Lure fishing

Lake Geneve - Lure fishing - 2013

Whitefish fishing : a turbulent day in the belly boat

Easter Monday, April 1st. I have a day off today so I took the opportunity to make it fishing day on Lake Geneva.
Pike enters its mating season therefore there is no need to take my pike tackle.
It's a bit windy today which causes big waves on the small lake where I use to fish. When I prepare my material, and I hear the waves crashing against the shores of Lake Geneva, I know it will be physically a very tough day.

It has been three weeks since I fished a whitefish somewhere between 30 and 35 meters deep so I decided to venture the same depths. At the time I get at my fishing spot, a boat drops anchor at 35 meters depth. They detected some fish on their sonar but I do not see anything on mine. I look between 20 and 40 meters but without success and very little or no fish activity on my screen. I see that these fishermen catch a small whitefish and a perch around noon.

I do not want to give up and continue to fight against waves and I try to position on the same spot although I know this is not the best weather to fish for whitefish will because I will never feel the soft touch of the ‘féra’ with all these movements in my float tube.

It is around 14:00 when I plan to go to the shore to stretch my legs a bit. In approaching the lake border, I see at about 8 meters deep fish activity on the sonar. It takes me less than a minute to get an aggressive touch. This is a big whitefish which goes off and empties my reel. 50 meters of dyneema are almost gone and I wonder how to stop this beast without breaking my line. I take the line between two fingers to be able to fine tune the tension on the wire. When the last meters of wire are rolling of the reel, the whitefish turns back and swims fast towards me.

It is really important now to reel fast and keep a little bit of tension on the line because the whitefish easily escape. The fight takes me about 20 minutes and the adrenaline is pumping through my veins. Finally I lift a nice whitefish of 55cm on my knees.

During the fight I have not been paying attention and the waves carried me at least 50 meters from where I hooked the first fish. This demands another effort to return to the bench for whitefish. Once there, very soon a second hangs and I start a similar battle.

In three hours, it is now around 17:00, I landed 7 large whitefish between 50 and 58cm. I've done a few more fights but three unhooked. I am completely exhausted and lactic acid begins to accumulate in the legs.

I would have preferred to have the energy to continue to complete a maximum of 10 per day, but my body does not allow doing so.

After 5 hours without any touch my day turned into a great success. It was amazing, I was looking for whitefish between 20 and 40 meters and I found a bench at 8 meters, so early in the season.

Enjoy your fishing - Roel