Yankee's Summer Tightline Shootout

[Yankee Troller]

Friday (Practice) - After a bumpy ride over from Olcott the night before we were eager to hit the water! Not only did we hear fishing was still AMAZING, but fishing in front of Toronto is a beautiful thing. We broke the pier heads about 5:30am and headed East to some waypoints from the previous event a month earlier. Wouldn’t ya know it, but those fish never moved! Obviously I’m kidding, but when we hit those set of waypoints we had rods flying.

We ran a pretty typical program for us. Our three Cannons went down with flasher/fly combos. Mostly green/white paddles and various flys throughout the day. All of which were A-TOM-MIK’s of course! Hammer flys, Bobblehead, Ultra Green Glow, Hypnotist, and Mirage all took their share of fish. On our divers we pulled more flasher/fly combos. In the morning the Wonder Dot Smartfish/A-TOM-MIK Glow Blue Hammer was a great combo. Lastly, we set out a 300, 400, and a 500 copper. The 300 and 400 pulled flasher/fly combos, and the 500 copper pulled a meat rig the entire day. The 300 and 400 took fish but the 500 copper rotted all day, and we tried about 3 different meat combos with no dice.

After a combo took a few fish we retired it for the day and went on to find other combos that worked. It slowed for us when we pulled the starters and put in the back ups, but we got a chance to rule out a bunch of stuff. As the day pressed on we trolled down to the island and worked the drop. Things picked up about 12pm, which we figured they would with the full moon. Our high divers started to shine, and one combo stood out. The Dreamweaver Oil Slick Spin Doctor/A-TOM-MIK Glow Blue Little Boy Blue fly. It took three fish in the high sun and then was retired until the following morning.

About 1pm we were rewarded with our first Tyeeeeeeeee (30lb+) of the season. It took a Stinger 11’ Hammertime paddle with an A-TOM-MIK Ultra Green Glow fly on it tracking the bottom on our deep rigger. We thought we had a strong practice, and had a decent feeling going into the event.

Saturday (Tourney) - We set lines at 6:30am and it wasn’t long until rods started poppin’. We weren’t fishing a great screen, but they were coming, so we stuck it out. The first three or four fish were small Chinook and Coho Salmon, and nothing we wanted in our box at the end of the day, but we boxed them anyway just to get to our 6 fish box. As the morning rolled on the size got better and our program was dialed in.

We started the morning with a Dreamweaver Hammertime Spin Doctor/Hammer fly on the 80’ rigger, a Smartfish Green Dot/A-TOM-MIK Hypnotist fly on the 60’ rigger, and a Stinger 11†E-Chip Hammertime/A-TOM-MIK Ultra Green Glow fly on the deep rigger. Our wires pulled a Wonder Dot Smartfish/A-TOM-MIK Blue Glow Hammer, and a Stinger Hammertime E-Chip/A-TOM-MIK Mirage fly back 125-200’. On our 300 copper we put out the Dreamweaver Oil Slick Spin Doctor/A-TOM-MIK Glow Blue Little Boy Blue combo. Everything took fish except the deep rigger which pulled out Tyeeeeeee rig from the day before.

We switched out that combo on the deep rigger for a meat rig and after a few fish we pulled one of the divers and sent out a meat rig on it. We had our fish, and now we wanted big fish! The meat rig on a 325’ diver would be our late morning early afternoon MVP after the Dreamweaver Hammertime Spin Doctor/A-TOM-MIK Hammer slowed on the 80’ rigger from the morning. We would whack fish right through until about 11am when it really shut down to a pick.

Going into weigh-in we figured we had a 22lb average. We had one big guy we guessed at 28/29lbs, but the others looked between 20 and 22lbs. We also heard it was a grind for a lot of people, and the size of their six wasn’t great. We were banking on a top 10 from the sounds of it, but when our fish hit the scales and we had 144lbs and I was thoroughly shocked! I guess I need to go back to Salmon weight school! After losing by 1 and 2 ounces in the Spring event each fish was placed in the cooler and not touched until the end of the day. We weren’t going to risk losing ounces trying to figure out what we had throughout the day.

We ended up taking 5th place out of 60 teams, and that ends our 2012 tourney season. We couldn’t have asked for a better tourney season. We held our own, and placed in the top 10 in almost every event fished. Now its head down and charter mode until October.

[Grant Sadler]

Nice Job guys, WOW those are some pigs:thumb: I'am hoping to at least catch one in the high teens next week just for fun:cool: going to lake Michigan my fav. port Pentwater and this time of the year who know what ya might catch;)

[JWheeler]

Nice job Captain!

[slipknot]

You aren't kidding... Toronto is a beautiful port to fish out of and the fishing always seems to be great!

Congrats on a great tourney season!