Niagara River Trout

Got an invite from a friend to head to the Lower Niagara for some trout last weekend. After asking permission from my fiance, and getting a sitter for the kids, I made arrangements with Joe and we had our plan set. Saturday would be the day, 6am we would leave his place for the 45 minute drive to the launch. I was particularly excited for the outing due the the very poor winter we had and lack of ice fishing for this winter. For those of you that follow my posts, I have only gotten out twice on the ice. This was my first open water trip since November 5th, when I was out for a bass tournament. So needless to say, I was pumped to hit the water again! Alarm went out, got up and made a coffee. Which is a neccessary step to surviving an early morning! Met Joe at his place around 5:45am, loaded the boat, and got on the road. Made it to the launch around an hour later after stopping for gas and more coffee. The weather for the day was CALLING for a calm, warm, sunny day. Who would have thought the weather man would screw that up?!? The weather wasnt horrible by any means. it was about 8 degrees out, winds were light, with the occassional stronger gusts. It was overcast most of the day, we didnt see the sun till 12:30 or so. The fog on the river was insane for the entire morning! Within an hur or so, there river and shoreline was full of anglers. The bite was tough to say the least. We talked to a few guys that were out and they all reported low catch rates. 1 or 2 fish per boat. We managed to land 4 fish and missed another 5 or 6 bites. Roe bags did the damage for the day, with one fish coming on a minnow. The last 'Bow I caught, was in the 8lb range, and had a chunk bitten out of its take that was the size of my fist! This was a fair sized trout, and after seeing that..... well, I wanted to catch the fish that was trying to eat 8lb trout!! All the fish were released to make babies and be caught another day. I also managed to break 2 rods on the day!! One before we started fishing, the other when i got home!! Haha. Guess that only means my next report will be of a shopping trip!! Hope you enjoyed! Please follow me and send a PM to say hi!