Yankee Report 5/20-5/22

[Yankee Troller]

May 20 & 21

The fishing on the West end has been tough the past few weeks. We are used to huge catches of Kings this time of year, but with the cold Winter and Spring we’ve had coupled with all the East winds the King bite just hasn’t materialized. I’d also want to mention that the Kings we are catching are so chuck full of bait by the time we are fishing in the morning they have their bellies filled with smelt and alewives.

We left the dock Friday morning around 6:30am with our crew and headed down to the famous Niagara Bar. The only problem we faced was the dense fog that met us at the pier heads. That now makes two weekends where we learned how important radar on a boat can be. We stopped short because we weren’t interested in hitting another boat, or floating debris coming down from the Niagara River. The first few hours were slow. We finally got into a decent Coho bite on the surface and the corner rigger fires. I knew it had to be a Salmon, and then the line started peeling out. Within a few minutes a nice mid teens King Salmon was flopping around on the deck. We finished the day with a decent box of fish, but only one of those was a King. The King took a Dreamweaver SS Daves Salmon Slapper, and the Cohos were taking Challenger Puerto Rican’s.

When we got back to the dock Friday afternoon we quickly learned the bite was tough, and very few King bites were had. We were also very surprised to learn that inside the King we caught was 19 Smelt.

Saturday morning came, and the game plan was to go back down to the Niagara bar and grab some Cohos and hope for a king bite or two. When we got down there the Coho bite was much tougher than the day before. It seemed like they were off the body bait bite, and orange spoons were the ticket. A Dreamweaver SS Orange Slurpee and a Honeybee were our top togs of the morning.

By later afternoon we noticed quite a few boats heading offshore, which we thought was interesting. So, our curiosity got the best of us and we pointed the boat NE and trolled out to see what the big deal was. Well, we found out quickly why everyone was running out there. Warmer water, and a lot of fish turned a slow day into a great day. We didn’t have to compete with the bait out there, like we did on the inside, and the mature Salmon were on the feed. Our riggers from 60’ to the surface were taking fish as were our short cores run off our otter boats. Everything we took came on spoons, but no one spoon stood alone as the top dog of the afternoon. The mix of fish out there was amazing. 9 miles offshore and there were Brown Trout, Lake Trout, Rainbows, and of course Kings.

May 22 - Fun with some Family

Our charter canceled on us earlier in the week, so we had an opening in our schedule. I really wanted to get my cousins kids out on the boat to take them fishing, so that’s exactly what we did. After experiencing the fast and furious bite offshore the day before we were filled with a ton of energy to get back out there to lay the smack down on some Kings.

We left the dock at 6:30 and off we went. We got out there and it didn’t take long to get rods firing. Our riggers from 30-60’ down and our short cores were taking shots regularly. The Dreamweaver SS Midnight Special was our best spoon of the morning. We couldn’t find another color that was as consistent all morning, and we went through a ton of them. On the short cores it was the Dreamweaver SS Orange Slurpee and the same Honeybee from the day before. The mix of fish was still out there, and all classes of fish were caught. The big kings were a little too big for the kids, but they fought them like champs, and were amazed at how big the fish were. It was a great morning, and it was sad to see it end so soon.