May 28, 2020 Whitbourne Argo Trouting Trip (25 Photos)
25. Taking full advantage of Governments recently relaxed social distancing restrictions and the expansion of family bubbles, French and I loaded up his 2017 Argo Avenger 8x8 for a day trouting. We headed out over the highway west to Whitbourne headed for Highwaters.
24. French had recently installed an Argo accessory outboard motor bracket and a brand new Yamaha 2.5 long shaft outboard. (Check out French's Argo Project on the Projects in the Shed page). This compact unit is fantastic, it has an onboard fuel tank so no fuel can/hose necessary, it's 4-stroke and rotates 360 degrees for great manoeuvrability and reverse.
23. Of course Argos will propel themselves on OEM Argo tires which Mark has. It's slow and logs a lot of wear on the machine as your only travelling at about 3-4km/h while the drive train is running near top speed. That's a nice bit of extra wear and tear on the engine, tranny, chains and bearings.
22. The small outboard is quieter, faster, burns a lot less fuel and saves the driveline of the Argo from extra hours wear and tear.
21. I sat in front and piloted the machine off land and into water driving on tires until water was deep enough for the outboard. French then took over piloting from the back seat.
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19. We headed in the old power line ATV trail and hopped into the water with ease. We headed into the same gully we went ice fishing earlier this year and were not disappointed.
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14. Even though fishing was great, we wanted to try out as many gullies as we could in one day. We went from one spot to the next and the fishing just got better and better!
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11. We had such a great time that we never even stopped for a cook-up. The 2.5 outboard propelled the machine perfectly for trolling too which allowed us to cover a lot of water.
10. The last place we tried was at the top of Sooley's pond just off shore from our fire pit clearing where we've done a lot of ice fishing over the years.
9. Once again we were not disappointed and eventually packed up around 7:30pm. All in all between the two of us we caught about 30-40 trout. We put most of them back keeping only 8-9 between the two of us for a meal. Neither of us are big on having a freezer full of fish, a fresh meal here and there and the pure enjoyment of catching them is all we need.
8. Once we got back to the truck we decided to have a cook-up before hitting the highway. It had been a long day with no breaks and we were starved. I broke out my trusty GSI Pinnacle stove & pot and started frying up a couple onions.
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6. Next we added a large bottle of French's homemade bottled moose to the mix.
5. After simmering for about 15 mins we dug in and enjoyed a meal fit for a king!
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3. Even with a traffic jam at the Holyrood detour (due to highway repairs) it was still an epic day on the water, one of the best and most successful days trouting we've had.
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1. The following morning I heated up the frying pan, Boomer and I enjoyed another awesome feed of fresh pan fried trout.
Cheers, MIKE
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