Yankee 6/26 & 6/27

[Yankee Troller]

6/26 – Derby Fishing

We left the dock at 7am after the girls got their breakfast in. Man I hate it when they don’t want to wake up early! We headed out to 100fow and set lines. We ran with a double diver program, three riggers, and a 400 copper down the chute. We ran paddles on the deep divers, and spoons on the high divers. Spoons on all the riggers and a paddle on the copper would finish off our program.

On the wires we planted a Wonder Dot SmartFish pulling a shredded A-TOM-MIK Hammer fly at 200’ on a 1.5, and a Green Dot SmartFish pulling an A-TOM-MIK Hypnotist out 150’ on a 1.5. On the 400 copper we pulled my Custom Green SmartFish with an A-TOM-MIK Hypnotist. The first round of lure choices on the riggers was Northern King Lazer Spooks, Dreamweaver SS Glow Froggys, and pair of Dreamweaver SS Firecrackers. Our high Divers were set on 3’s and put 50’ behind our low divers with Magnum spoons. One was a Dreamweaver gator, and the other was a Dreamweaver Moon Cricket.

After we got set-up it took a while to get into some fish. We ran West a bit and continued to troll west because we knew there were some good Kings down there from reports on Friday our of Olcott. After 30 minutes of nothing I looked up at the sky and it was very overcast. The light bulb goes off in my head. The Sunday of the Orleans Pro Am the sky was very similar to today. So I dug out the spoons that were red hot on that day, and down they went. A Dreamweaver SS Da Shiznit went down 70, a Dreamweaver Feelin’ Erie went down on the 90 rigger, and a pair of Stinger Stingray Wonderbreads went down 50. It didn’t take long and the rods started going crazy with hooked up fish! For the next few hours we would pound on the Salmon. Mostly 2yr olds with 1 or 2 3yr old mixed in. Perfect fish for the girls!

Our fish were only coming on an Easterly troll, and we found out why when we tried to troll West. The current was strong down there. We finally got a few rods to fire on the West troll at the end of our trip, but the East troll was by far the best troll for us and a few other boats I talked to. We finished the day with a lot of fish hooked up and landed, and we came very close to the Lake Ontario Grand Slam. As I stated above mostly a Salmon bite (Chinook and Cohos), but we did manage to get a Brown Trout and a Steelhead on this trip.

The girls had fun, so that was win. We had fun too, but no derby fish for us on this day. On a side note the Coho Salmon that we are getting are very healthy and very nice sized.

6/27 Derby Fishing

We left a little earlier this morning with just my brother, my girlfriend, and me. The six rod spread was the max we could run, which I can’t stand because it’s hard to cover the water column efficiently. Well, by the end of the day maybe less was better!

We set up the same program we ended with yesterday (minus 2 extra wires). The program consisted of: 3 riggers, 2 wires, and a 400 copper. On the riggers we had Dreamweaver Feelin’ Erie on the 90-100 rigger, Dreamweaver SS Da Shiznit on our 70-80 rigger, and on our center rigger we had a pair of Stinger Stingray Wonderbreads down for half the morning, and then we switched it up to a Pair of Stinger Later Gators. On the wires we planted a Wonder Dot SmartFish pulling a shredded A-TOM-MIK Hammer fly at 225’ on a 1.5, and a Green Dot SmartFish pulling an A-TOM-MIK Hypnotist out 200’ on a 1.5. On the 400 copper we pulled my Custom Green SmartFish with an A-TOM-MIK Hypnotist.

It took us a few minutes to find the fish. We hung out in that 150’ area we did so well in yesterday. We got a call from a buddy a few minutes after we pointed it north, and he said they were on them pretty good. The end of our conversation ended in “Eric, I’ll call you back! Screeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaamer!†That was the start of it, and it would be CRAZY for the next few hours. At one point 5 out of the 6 rods were out of the water because we had caught fish on them. We tripled at one point, which is fun with 3 people. We did something today that we haven’t done in a long time, and that was to hit a Lake Ontario Grand Slam. In my book that consist of a Salmon, Steelhead, Brown Trout, and a Lake Trout. Our catch for the day consisted mostly of Chinook and Coho Salmon. We caught 1 each of the following: Brown Trout (5lbs), Lake Trout (5lbs), and a Rainbow Trout (17lbs). If we would have boated an Atlantic salmon it would have made it even more special because that would mean we would have caught every cold water species Lake Ontario has to offer.

Everything was going with consistency until about 8:45 when the 80 rigger fires. Within seconds a MONSTER Rainbow Trout is breaking surface. My brother and I both yelled “Holy SH*T!†The focus and the intensity was now directed to getting this pig to the net. With at least 6 acrobatic jumps I was sweating bullets. On the way in the fish decided it wanted to test our McCoy Mono in the wire diver, but my brother grabbed that rod and put it in a safe place in the center rigger. When this fish hit the deck it was all high fives. The decision was to head in and weigh it in for the Summer LOC Derby. We quickly put it on the scale and it read a heavy 17 pounds. Knowing the leader was currently my buddy Rich Baliva on the Godzilla boat at 15 pounds and change we put the throttle down. We arrived at Narby’s and the fish weighed 17.4 pounds on the LOC Derby Scale. Good enough for 1st place! Now we have to wait 3 weeks to see if we get knocked off the pedestal.

We still had two hours of fishing time before I had to go, so we headed back out to the 25N line and set rods. WE changed out the Green dot SmartFish on the wire for a Gator Spin Doctor and an A-TOM-MIK Green Crinkle, but the rest of the spread stayed the same. Well, it didn’t take long and we were into them again. We would end the day with a nice double on teenage Chinooks. Everything in the spread was going quite consistently the whole morning. Our screen wasn’t great, but rods were flying.

The mix of fish off the Oak right now is amazing!

[anthonyyost]

Nice fish, sounds like a blast!

[Yankee Troller]

Thanks, it was a great weekend of fishing!

[A-Fishy-Anado]

Awesome report Rich....and great FISH!!

[Yankee Troller]

Thanks!

[SUPERTRAMP]

Outstanding Capt. I need to get my butt over to Lake Ontario and check this stuff out.

[Yankee Troller]

This would be the year for you to check it out! Tons of reports and pictures of Atlantic's in the 10-20lb range. A LOT of Salmon caught 30lbs and above.

[GLF]

Great job Richard!

[Priority1]

Rich, Fantastic:)