Yankee 7/31 & 8/1 from the Oak

[Yankee Troller]

July 31st

(Morning) – We had our annual trip with a family going back 3 generations. Grandpa Mike, his son Mike, and Mike’s sons Jake and Ryan joined us for an exciting day on Lake Ontario. We set up on the inside looking for a big guy or two. I am always a sucker for that inside water in the early morning. The screen wasn’t exactly good, but it had its highs and lows. Only thing we could pop out of there were a few skippy kings. We pushed in NW looking to head out to deep water for a steelhead bite, but a few phone calls confirmed that the bite out there wasn’t any better. We turned the boat east and zigged and zagged down to the flats to see if we could find something. We had rods popping all morning long, but in the end we would have 2 fish that would make the legal size limit. A beautiful 9lb Rainbow Trout and a King Salmon in the 6lb range.

Our set-up today consisted of 3 riggers loaded with a variety of spoons, 2 wire Walker Deeper Divers pulling Paddle/Fly combos, and 2 300 coppers with spoons. The HOT spoons of the day were DW Shiznits, Midnight Specials, Gators, NK Sea Sick Waddlers, and Stinger Later Gators. We also tried out some of those LJ Shoehorn spoons and they took a few fish also. For paddles we ran an Albino Gator, a Gator, and a Wonder dot. These were trailed by Hammer and Hypnotist A-TOM-MIK flies.

I guess you can’t always catch the big ones, but what made this trip fun was the fish we were catching were the right size for the two boys. Given the size of these fish most of the time they could reel these fish in on their own without any help from their dad. I really enjoy taking kids out and getting them into some fish. It really puts smiles on their face like you wouldn’t believe.

(Evening) – This was a special trip! We surprised my father by taking him out on his boat for the first time this year. He had a serious accident in November and wasn’t able to fish any tourneys with us in 2010. We only had a few hours to fish, but I wanted to check out the offshore bite. We headed out to the 30N line and worked it North to the 32N line and in a couple hours of fishing mid day we hooked and landed 5 fish. 2 of those 5 were keepers. We had heard when we got off the water in the morning that there was a great bite out at the 34N line in the morning. We tried to get there, but just never made it. However, it solidified the decision to head there in the morning. The DW Shiznit and NK Sea Sick Waddler were the spoons that took the shots on our evening trip.

August 1st

Today we had a guy that works with me at my day job join us with some of his friends. This was his 3rd time out with us, and believe me when I say he was spoiled last year on his August trip by Mother Nature and the fish god. We headed out to the 29N line where I wanted to set-up and troll north. It was bumpy when we got out there, but I knew that is where the bite was. We fished a total of 2 hours before we had to head back in with a sick member of the group. In those two hours we smoked them, although you wouldn’t have known by looking in our cooler.

At first I ran a simple 3 rigger, 2 wire, 1 copper spread. We were in 3-5’s for most of the morning until they built to 4-6’s. After a disappointing show from our wires I decided to add two more to try and dial the wire bite in.

On our riggers we pulled DW Shiznits, Stinger Later Gators, and NK Sea Sick Waddlers. They were parked from 50-80' down. The first fish took our Stinger Later Gators, and I mean that literally. Bye Bye Stingers! Thanks Mr. Steelhead! No more Later gators onboard so down went a DW SS Gator. The riggers would take most of the smaller fish on this morning. On the 300 copper I ran a Mag DW Gator. This rod alone took 3 majors. One of those fish was even able to crack me off into the copper. Very disappointing! We landed 1 of those 3 majors. Our 4th major came off the wire out 175’ set on a 1 pulling a DW 42nd Paddle/A-TOM-MIK 42nd fly. Dropped him too!

The Kings that we did hook into were pizzed! They were making 3 and 4 runs. It was actually pretty exciting to see them fighting like this. The waves made it much harder to fight these guys, and they definitely stuck it to us on this morning. The cool story of the day happened when I was setting out my high diver. I was holding my low diver in my hand off the back of the boat and had a King hit it. He hit it and just started SMOKING line off the reel. It’s a wonder the rod didn’t end up taking a swim.

[tanglefactor2]

We hooked up with 3 majors last week off Oak Orchard and all 3 handed it to us big time, those big guys over there seem really angry this year!

[GLF]

Nice job Richard. Too bad you didn't get more of those big ones in.

[A-Fishy-Anado]

Another great report Rich:thumb:

[Just Hook'n]

SWEEEEET. Nice pictures. Thanks for sharing.

[Priority1]

Rich, Gotta Love It when the kids are onboard. GJ as usual on Lake O.