Yank'n it @ the Oak 9/15-9/16

[Yankee Troller]

It was a tough weekend boys! Easily the toughest of our season so far. Lets hope the next few aren't as bad. Although, can we really complain after how AMAZING the fishing was ALL season long?

September 15th (Morning) - After not being allowed to showcase Lake Ontario to these guys from Jersey on Friday afternoon, we awoke to much of the same NW winds. The good news is that it made time for a nice breakfast at the 4C’s cafe as a bunch of captains sat around and BS’d. The bad news was we knew warm water was being forced into our fishing grounds.

We finally made it out around 8am. Fishing was tough for most, and our bites seemed to come in spurts. We found our best screen down between the flats and the glass house in 105-120’ of water. The fish were pinned to the lake floor, but there were periods throughout the day where they rose up and chased out baits around. We ran a simple six rod spread. Our three Cannons pulled big paddles for the most part. 11†E-Chips, and 10 †Spin Doctors trailed by A-TOM-MIK fly’s worked well as did a Moonshine Carbon 14 and a Dreamweaver Sea Sick Waddler Mag. We ran regular sized flsaher/fly combos on our divers. They were going out 300’ on a 1.5 setting. Lastly, we pulled a 500 copper with a Moonshine Carbon 14.

Our HOT baits today were the 11†Stinger E-Chip Hammertime/A-TOM-MIK B-fly, and a Chrome E-Chip/A-TOM-MIK Hammer fly. We also took fish off a Dreamweaver Spin Doctor/A-TOM-MIK Blue Glow Hammer. We started out with a few Brown Trout and a Coho, but by the middle of the trip it was all King Salmon action. We were able to pound out about 12 tough bites, and these guys couldn’t have been happier!

September 16th - A few boats took a few fish at the wall the day before, so we wanted to hit that up before going deeper looking for some stagers. We left the dock around 5:30am and were surprised to see about a dozen boats already working the skinny water. Oh well, so we got in line.

We sent out four surface lines and put one down on our middle Cannon downrigger. We ran J-Plugs on Church TX-22 boards back 75’ and out 75’. Inside those we ran a # 4 and a #5 Lyman off the corners. The first two rods to fire both came off the East corner of the wall. On the first pass the Salmon ate the #4 Lyman, and on the second pass the #5 Lyman went. Both Lymans were the same color - Chartreuse with a blue ladderback.

We would take a few passes with nothing, so we switched out the glow J-Plugs to shinny ones. One was a bloody nose, and the other was a Mongoose. A few passes later and the bloody nose takes a ride. It’s hilarious to watch a Church TX-22 go skipping across the surface! We landed our biggest Salmon of the day tipping the scales around 22lbs. A few more passes led to just one dropped fish on a bloody nose J-Plug, and that would be the end of our wall fishing for the morning.

We finally made the decision to put some water under us and target the fish we had going the day before. We made it out there and the screen just wasn’t what it was the day before. We fished it anyway! We went on to take a Brown and a 2yr old Salmon along with missing two other fish over the next 3 hours. We called it quits at 1pm, and headed for the dock.

It was a tough weekend out of the Oak, which is rare, and we worked hard for every bite we got. Let’s hope it gets better for the upcoming weekend!

[KJ pluggin]

Nice job Captain.

[GLF]

Nice job Richard.

[floorboy]

Great job