Yankee's Tighline Shootout

[Yankee Troller]

Friday 7/29 (Practice) - We left the dock in the dark looking to take advantage of some of these HUGE salmon we’ve been watching get caught on the North shores Greater Ontario Salmon Derby (GOSD). Our Navionics chip showed us one heck of a drop off around the Toronto Islands, so we motored the 5 miles to where it started and fished it West to what’s called the Spit. Our screen wasn’t very good, but rods were going. The temp was up higher than what we are used to. We ran three rods on our Cannon DT10’s, 2 wires pulling Walker Deeper Divers, and three junk lines. My brother accidentally put his new, never caught a fish, A-TOM-MIK Bobble Head fly behind a green dot Spin Doctor thinking it was a Hammer fly. Well, he wasn’t even able to clip the ten color core to the planer release and the line starts screaming out of his hand. We land that fish, which ends up being about 25lbs and go to reset it. Out goes that core again, and just like the first time brother Craig goes to clip it into the planer release and another 25lb King takes the line out of his hand. Talk about a HOT combo!!!! That combo would take 3 more fish throughout the day off the ten color core.

Once the bite and picture disappeared on the inside we pushed it South. We picked a few fish inside of 300’, but we weren’t seeing anything that made us want to stay. Knowing we had a pretty good morning program we went looking for a back-up. Off to the NW corner hoping to find warmer water. It was a little sloppy out there, and the warmer water was out there, but the Kings weren’t there. However, we did find a few really nice Coho, and as many Steelhead as you could possibly want. Hot spoons for those fish were Dreamweaver Midnight Specials, Stinger A.S.S. Blackfin, and a Dreamweaver Lemon Ice. It felt good to find a back-up Coho program given how tough the King bite was after 8am.

Saturday 7/30 (The Shootout) - We ran over to the spot we hit the 25lb’s on and scanned the area, but there was very little there. Less than the morning before, but we set our program out and hoped for the best. This tourney only allowed 6 rods so we started with 2 riggers, 2 wires, and 2 junk lines. When we realized how tough the bite was we tried to go as stealthy as possible and pulled one of the riggers for another junk line. It took about an hour to get our first bite and when we did the second one came fast. Both of those Kings took cooler naps, and then it was another hour wait for a bite. When that bite came another one came along with it like the first pair. Three out of the four fish came on paddle/fly combos like the Smartfish Wonder dot/ A-TOM-MIK Shredded Hammer, and a chrome E-Chip pulling an A-TOM-MIK Hammer Lime Live. Our biggest King would take a Dreamweaver Lemon Ice down 25’ stretched back 60’. After that we would go on to rot for a few hours. We saw boats washing lures, so we knew it wasn’t happening for people. It was time for a decision.

We pondered the coho move for about an hour, and at 12:30 it was a done deal and we were headed for the Coho’s. We stopped short of our waypoint to set-up three riggers, two wires, and a 300 copper. We didn’t get a tenth of the mile past that waypoint and a Coho slams a Dreamweaver Get R Done on a slider. We had an hour left, and all we could find were Steelhead. With five minutes to go the center rigger fires and we are tied into a King. It makes three short runs after being brought to the back of the boat, and just before we got within net range the hooks pull out. Fish number six swims away with 2 minutes left, and we knew that one fish was going to cost us.

When we got to weigh in it was clear that everybody struggled. As box after box of fish hit the scales we knew a top ten would be close. When it was all said and done we would go on to take the tenth spot out of 60 teams. What a great event this tournament was. Fishing the Toronto skyline was pretty spectacular, and I never realized how big that city was. We followed the rules of the boarder, and we never had an ounce of trouble. The Canadian police even pulled us over during practice, and they were very pleasant to deal with. Overall a great weekend!

Oh, and that fish we almost scooped cost us 6 spots…….Woulda, coulda, shoulda….