Yankee @ the Tightline Shootout

[Yankee Troller]

Fishing the Toronto Islands is something I think every Lake Ontario angler needs to do at least once. You wont fish a better shoreline, or a prettier one for that matter. The structure is similar to the Niagara bar, and the fishing can be some of the best you will see on Lake Ontario. For some reason the Kings over on the North shore seem to fight harder than when they are on the South shore. I wish I could explain why!

Practice - We checked out some water to the East of Bluffers Park Marina first thing Friday morning. The screen was never there. We gave it a few hours looking in tight and out deeper, but we couldn't buy a bite. We picked the rods and headed West to the filtration plant and set back up trolling West. The further West we got the better the screen got on our Humminbirds. The gap seemed to be the best picture for us all weekend. Throughout the rest of the day we would go on to pick a few mid 20lb Kings, and an annoying amount of Coho's. We never "crushed" them, but we had a game plan to start with on Saturday morning.

Tourney - We headed right for the Toronto Islands at blast off, and our picture wasn't bad. We put out our spread which included all three of our Cannon Downriggers, two wire divers, and a 500' A-TOM-MIK copper. Flasher/Fly combos were on everything except the copper, which had a meat rig on it. The bite wasn't there right away, and it took 45 minutes to watch the first rod go. After that we dialed in on the fish and would end the day taking nine shots. Five of which we boated. Four were in the low 20lb range, and the fifth was a 8lb King.

Our hot presentation was our divers on tourney day. They accounted for four out of the five we weighed in. Those four diver shots all were pulling an A-TOM-MIK Glow Blue Hijacker fly. Two shots came with it behind a Hammertime flasher, and two came behind a Double Crush Green paddle out 275-350' on a 1.5 setting. The fifth fish took an A-TOM-MIK Hammer fly behind a Hammertime paddle. We missed a couple fish on meat rigs throughout the day. One was on a deep rigger, and the other was on a long copper.

While we fueled up the boat, after dropping off our cooler, we started to hear how tough it was for teams who fished in many different areas. We knew we had a good day given the tough bite, but we were still short one fish from our tourney limit. When the fish hit the scales we slid into 3rd place, but by the end of weigh-in we would end up falling into 5th place. That worked for us! Anytime you finish in the top ten in a tourney you did well!

[KJ pluggin]

Nice job Capt.!