Yankee's Wilson Scotty KOTL Event

[Yankee Troller]

May 7th (Practice) - Our team left the dock at 6am, and the game plan was to head West to the 4 mile creek area and work the waters between there and the border. We didn't get our rods set, and they started to fly. The first fish took a 175' wire diver pulling a black double crush glow Smart Fish and an A-TOM-MIK hammer fly. While that fish was in play the corner rigger started to throb and I was on that rod. As I popped it from the downrigger I could tell it was a nice fish. However, about 10 seconds into the fight I could tell the fish went under my low diver. We tried to fix that, but nothing was working. So, I put the thumb down on that fish and never let it get more than 20 or 30 yards on me. What happened was the cheater caught the wire line on the way up. We fixed that problem and proceeded to put that fish in the boat. It was a very healthy 20 pound Salmon, and as I was pulling the Dreamweaver Moon Cricket out of that fish the fish on the 175' diver hit the deck. That was only a 7-9lb Salmon, and we sent it back to grow up. We boxed the 20lb'er because we were in the Dreamweaver Big Fish Friday tournament, and preceded to set the rest of the lines. We fished a 3 rigger, 4 wire, 3 copper program. Soon after getting all the rods set up our 500 copper down the chute takes off singing! Joe jumps on the rod, and he was in for a battle. This fish played with us by taking a few nice runs. Generally on long coppers one or two runs are the norm, but this fish didn't want to stop. After about 30 minutes of hoping it was big, and bustin' Joe's chops for allowing this fish to whoop him the Salmon hit the deck. Disappointment set in as this fish would hit the scales at 18lbs (not bigger than the 20lb Salmon already in the cooler), so we put him back to be caught another day. On the end of that 500 copper was a wonder dot Smart Fish trailed by an A-TOM-MIK Hammer fly. In the next hour we picked up two Coho's and at 8:45am our bite was over. We trolled until 1pm with just one more fish to add to the count. The predicted winds started to pick up out of the East, and we called it a day.

The 20lb Salmon I battled.

Joe taking a butt whoopin!

May 8th and 9th (Tourney) - For the first time in 14 years both days of a Scotty event were canceled. The Gale Force winds on Saturday were spectacular! The piers in Wilson were submerged in HUGE waves. Not a chance we would have made it out there, and I applaud the tournament directors for making the right decision. The winds continued on into Sunday, and we even had some snow flakes to top it off. Just a miserable weekend for Lake Ontario.

[Nailer]

Great shots Captain Richard. Gale winds SUCK!

[A-Fishy-Anado]

Nice fish and great report Rich!

[GLF]

The tongue sticking out of Joe's mouth says it all! I would look like that also after reeling in 500' of copper.

How did you 20lb fish do in the Friday big fish contest?

[Yankee Troller]

Didn't bother weighing it! 1st-4th looked like this (please remember to pick your jaw up off the desk) 32, 26, 26, 25. That's pounds not inches folks. We have some massive Salmon being taken this year, which leads me to believe that we may see a few 40lb brutes this August/September. Our Spring derby which typically takes a 24lb fish to win saw 2 - 32lb Salmon to the scales and 20th place was a 24lb King. Just an unreal leaderboard! I dont want the Fall to get here too soon, because that means the season is winding down, but the excitement of a 40lb fish hitting my deck is unreal!

http://loc.org/derby/leaderboard/currentadult.asp