Yankee's Spring King of the Lake

[Yankee Troller]

Spring King of the Lake 2014

It felt great going into the first event of the season. The severe Winter had us thinking hard about what the fish were doing for weeks in advance. This event kicks off Salmon season for us. It also provides a break from the Spring Brown Trout charters.

Friday (Practice) - We checked the Welland Canal water first, and it wasn’t long before rods were flying. Lakers and Kings made up the catch. We ran our three Cannon Downriggers with a spoon program, and two divers. The hot spoons were a Dreamweaver Sea SIck Waddler, and a Moonshine Arctic Ice. The Moonshine was parked on our diver, and the Sea Sick Waddler was on our Cannon out and down. We made a few passes and figured that was “a spot†so we moved on.

Second area we checked was Jordan, and by the time we got there it was blowing NE pretty hard, and we didn’t catch or learn much of anything in that water. We figured anything we learned was going to get washed away by mother nature, so to the dock we headed for a little socializing on the dock with friends we haven’t seen since the Fall.

Saturday (Day 1) - We headed to the Welland, but after and hour and a half we didn’t have anything to show for. We tucked in to the cove East of the Welland and started to dial in a Coho program. We worked the waters down to 4 mile point and back to hook into about 100 fish! It was insane! Mostly Coho and Brown Trout, but we got our first Grand Slam of the season! I can vouch for the 100 fish day by saying we went through all 18 of our clippers on each board tow line 2.5 times on top of our rigger shots.

Stick baits on one board, and spoons with split shot in front of them on the other board was the ticket. Anything bright seemed to work, and work well. As the day progressed the Coho got bigger. We finally were able to get 5 over 20†by 2pm. One was pushing 10lbs, which is a monster for the Spring time!

We thought 5 fish would be key in this event, and when the 5th hit the deck it was all high fives. Little did we know Kings were still snapping, and after day 1 we were in 15th place.

Sunday (Day 2) - We gave it a go for the mighty Chinook Salmon. It was all or nothing for us!.We set up in the leaders waters, and went to work. We weeded through a ton of Lake Trout, and some big ones to boot, to find four king bites. Three of which we landed. One took a Dreamweaver Sea Sick Waddler fished off our Cannon Downrigger down 35’ and MUPPED, one took a Moonshine Arctic Freeze off our diver out 40’, and a third took a Dreamweaver Glow Green Alewife on our other diver out 30’.

By 12:30 we were sitting on 3 and the decision was made to switch gears and box two Coho. We knew the bigger ones bit later in the day on Saturday. We went into the Coho water, and it was on immediately! Within an hour we were into over 20 fish, and we got our two Coho. However, they wouldn’t be enough to jump us up high enough into the money. We finished the event in 9th place, and you can’t knock a top 10 finish in these events when your fishing against some of Lake Ontario’s finest.

Salmon Season has begun!

[KJ pluggin]

Nice job guys.

[JWheeler]

Nice work! Keep on em!

[Priority1]

You da man.

[Yankee Troller]

Thanks guys!