Billy V

As long as your boat is docked in Sodus Bay, you're OK to drive your cooler over Nick. We do that every year.

I've run both before and we like the camo because it's a thinner diameter at the same lb. test. Lots of guys run 20# test because it's thinner still and will go even deeper. AFW Camo 30# is .012. Their 20# is .011. Their "bright" 30# is .015. I'm not sure if the fish like one over the other, but we choose the 30# camo because we fish with charter customers and feel like 20# is just too easy for them to break off, etc.

Tim, What Gambler said! If one of you is running 30lb camo colored wire and the other is running 30 lb. silver colored line, there's about a .003" difference in line diameter (camo is thinner and is what I run). It doesn't sound like much but that alone can make a pretty big difference in achievable depths, especially when you're trying to get down past 100' deep. We've run the Walkers and Dipsy Divers side by side on my boat many times and have gotten the same dive curves.

Tim, We run Walkers exclusively any more and have found them to have a virtually identical dive curve to regular Dipsy Divers.

We run all sorts of leads from 10-75' behind our Sharks. You gotta let the fish tell you what lead lengths they want on any particular day. And flasher/fly combos off them are deadly at times...not sure where they came up with that piece of "advice", but I wouldn't hesitate to run flashers off of them.

GREAT brown! Congrats on a real bruiser!!!

I personally use a Depth Raider. It's a great unit. I used to own a Moor, and it's a great unit too. I just happen to like the digital display of the DR a bit better than the analog dial on the Moor. The Moor and the DR share similar technologies (so does the Cannon). They use a coated cable and an antenna to pick up the signal from the probe. The Cannon's probe is a bit larger than the DR & the Moor, but its a good unit too, especially for under $200, even if its being discontinued. Cannon will support that product for years to come so I wouldn't worry too much about that. The new Fish Hawk is supposed to be a fabulous unit, but it's pretty spendy. Any of them will work for you. You just need to decide what your budget will allow and then go with one. Hope this helps!

We run 30# Big Game and have no problems with the fleas. I used to run Flea Flicker but I found it to have too much memory and line twist for my taste. I also didn't like how it laid on the reel. But it does keep the fleas off!

We've been running Daiwa Heartland's in both 9'6" and 10'6" for years and they've held up great. You can find them for around $40 at most tackle shops. http://www.daiwa.com/Rod/detail.aspx?id=97

I haven't been out much lately Tim. But we were targeting deep Kings (100-175' down) all spring.

Nice report Tim. Too bad they wouldn't go for you. Did you have a temp probe in the water? A buddy of mine was down near the silos today and did 4 or 5 Kings in that 130-200FOW area. He had his riggers & divers on the bottom and managed to pull a few out of there...nothing fast & furious but at least he moved some rods. Last time I talked to him he said he had 62 on the surface and 63 degrees down 140'!

Braves vs Phillies this week....Braves won a close one last night!

Bass Pro! Cheap and it lasts!

David, We were commenting to each other on your set-up...pretty cool looking! We did about the same as you in the area where we passed you, but when we slid a bit south of there we really lit 'em up. 80-100FOW was the spot for us. We did 15 or 16 fish in there in the last couple of hours of our trip...it was FUN!

Thanks guys...yeah the Phillies thing.... GO BRAVES!!!!!!!

Today we worked the East side and we WHACKED 'em good! What a difference a day makes. Yesterday the screen was blank pretty much everywhere we went, but today it was lit up with fish! 80-120 FOW was best for us, as was a down speed of 2.1mph. The DW SS Feelin' Irie, Green Eye Glow Ghost, and Die Hard were our best spoons on riggers set between 50-65' , and a Green Dot Spin Dr./Sigg's Rigs Glow Ghost fly fished off of a Deeper Diver out 210-240 on a #2 was our best flasher/fly set up.

Milliken is the big power plant South of Long Point. It's probably 6 or 7 miles from the plant to Long Point....just a guess. Yeah, the weeds were pretty bad at times. Lots of debris in the lake too. We hit a submerged log on our way up the lake this morning. We lucked out with no damage to the boat. Be careful out there!

Fished from 8am-1pm today. Set up a mile North of Milliken on the east side and did a small laker heading North but the screen was really dead from 60-300 FOW so we trolled across the lake and finally found a few marks North of Sheldrake in 60-80FOW. Surface temp was 61 and it was 47 down 60 ft. We did a few loops in that area and picked up a fish on each pass....nothing huge, but at least we got a few to bite. Best rig for us today was a Dreamweaver SS Die Hard on our riggers down 55-65ft over 60-80FOW at 2.1 down speed. Didn't have a touch on a wire diver or a leadcore rod. We dodged thunderstorms most of the day but managed to catch a few fish and not get tooooo wet in the process. Back out again tomorrow, good luck if you get out!

I was looking forward to it to Carl. I hope to be back up on Lake O again sometime soon. I miss it a lot!

Carl, If your copper gets "shortened" somehow , you can easily mend it and bring it back to its original length. Just haywire twist a length of copper in to replace what you lost. It's a really easy repair and can be done quickly while out on the water. The haywire twist will hold forever and it fits through line guides and level winds easily too. My 600 got "shortened" by a dipsy last year during a tournament and we had to put about 100' back on it. I pulled 100' off the spare spool and had us back at 600' in about 5 minutes.

Like I said in my earlier post, we used to run the coho (peanut) sized flies on Cayuga and we have better success with the regular sized ones. Definitely look into a track system if you can afford it. You'll lose a diver set-up in those plastic holders. I have a Traxstech system that I love, but there are lots of other choices too. Cannon's new holders are amazing, Cisco's are great, Big Jon's and Bert's are good too. If you can't slap down the coin for a full track system like one of those while you're saving for the house, you can easily get away with using Tite-Lok holders. They're fairly inexpensive and they'll hold up to a diver rod really well. I ran them on my old boat for years and they worked great for us. For about $32 you can't beat 'em. http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templ ... hasJS=true

You'll definitely want to stay with heavier (50Lb) line on your flies. The stiffer line imparts the proper action to the fly from the flasher and as Ray said, its just tougher for fish to break off. And as was mentioned above, you'll have a lot higher landing percentage using a tandem tied fly. We kept a detailed record last year and over 50% of our fish that came on flies had the extra stinger hook buried in them somewhere. In lots of cases the stinger was the only hook in the fish! I resisted adding the extra hook for several years because it seemed like just more work to me to tie them up. But when I finally started listening to what guys were saying about it I finally gave them a try. Now you won't find anything other than a tandem tied fly on my boat, and they're really no big deal to tie. Prior to being on Lake Ontario we used to fish Cayuga all the time (I live 5 minutes from the lake). We used to run the standard size flies behind an 8" Spinny and whacked em all the time on that set up. Now that we're back on Cayuga again for the time being, we're still running them and the fish still seem to like them. I've also run the Coho sized flies behind 6" flashers on Cayuga and frankly we did better on the standard sizes. In my opinion, wire line Diver set-ups don't need a snubber if you run the right line between the flasher and the diver, especially on the Finger Lakes with the smaller fish we have here. If you're running 30# regular mono you shouldn't have any problems. Mono will give you the stretch that you need. Be careful running straight Fluorocarbon as a leader with no snubber though. It has no stretch and if you run too light of line you'll risk breaking gear off. Since we run fluoro leaders we do like running snubbers when fishing for Kings on Lake Ontario. I think it helps lessen the chance of a big fish pulling a hook out at the back of the boat because it's really the only shock absorber we have at that point. Imagine a 30lb King at the back of the boat. You have the diver all the way to the rod tip. The rod is completely loaded up and has no room to give at all as you try to net the fish. Then the King pulls a flip-flop on you and tries to run just as you're netting it. If you run a Fluorocarbon leader like I do, you better have a snubber or that fish is gone. But there are lots of guys who run their divers with no snubbers and mono and they seem to do OK too. We have a pretty high landing percentage on Kings with our set-up so I'm gonna stick with what works for us.

Definitely put some riggers on that boat before you come down Jay! And for sure bring your Diver rigs too!

Another fast trip out with my Dad and William today. We left the dock at 2:30pm and were back at 4:30pm, but we put William on a few more Lakers again. Green Dalmatian Spin Dr/Sigg's White Crinkle fly behind a Deeper Diver out 210' on a #2 in 70 FOW took one, and the Dreamweaver SS Feelin' Irie spoon off our Starboard rigger down 60' took a couple more. 2.1-2.3 down speed seemed to be best just South of Milliken. That was about the only place we marked any fish, although we marked tons and tons of bait all the way up the East shore. I'm looking forward to getting out in the morning while I'm on vacation the week before the 4th and actually giving it a concentrated effort somewhere other than right out the front door in Myers. These short mid-day trips with the kids have been fun but I'm ready to really go after 'em!

I have chrome faceted, gold faceted, black faceted, and just plain old black Sharks. After giving all of them equal down time I painted every single one of them black. Personally I didn't find a bit of difference when Salmon fishing. I just like to have them all the same color...same as my Deeper Divers...BLACK! BTW, I scuffed my gold & chrome Sharks up before I painted them and the paint hasn't stuck very well.