Billy V

Today we fished out of Wilson and boated a nice mixed bag of Lakers, Kings, and Cohos. We started out a bit West of port in 50 FOW and boated a few nice Lakers that came on a DW SS Die Hard fished off of our riggers parked at 30 & 40 feet: After several hours of messing around in the skinny water we finally decided at about 10:30am to slide out to some deeper water and we were rewarded with several nice spring Kings. The Kings wanted our spoons run off of the riggers anywhere from 25-50' down over 80-110 FOW. The Northern King Sea Sick Waddler, DW SS Green Dolphin, and DW SS Green Goby were our best King spoons today, and we had a great King take a Green Double Crush Glow Spinny/Sigg's Rigs 42nd Pulse fly combo on a wire Deeper Diver set at 120' on a #2 setting: I wish I could tell you what our best down speed was today but we didn't have the probe up and working. Best SOG on the GPS was 2.5-2.8 for us today. We'll have our probe back in the water tomorrow. We'll be back out tomorrow and I'll do my best to get a report up before I catch an early morning flight to WI on Monday.

You can buy us a beer in Wilson to make up for it!

Huh, and I thought you were going to say a Green double crush glow Smart fish pulling a Sigg's Rig's Green Hypnotist fly! That setup won you more money than those three LOC Derby fish did combined last year! LOL!

There was a lot of green water inside of 100 FOW. I talked to a friend of mine who's fishing the Scotty and they had a tough day today, but there were a few decent boxes of fish at Saturday's weigh in. Looking forward to the Kings moving our way!!

I guess we're going to have to get used to it Brian...more mud chickens for us again today! Ray, that might have been us but I didn't hear anyone call...not that I could have anyway...that boat of ours is pretty noisy at cruise. At least we made it safe and sound and didn't encounter much floating debris!

More Laker action for us today. We got a late start and headed West towards the river at about 7am. We ran out to about 50 FOW just a tad East of 4 Mile and set up with that big SW wind at our backs. We had lots of marks on the screen in 80-90 FOW but we just couldn't get them going with any sort of consistency. In the two hours we were out there we got bit on our SS Die Hard on a rigger parked at 70' and we took a really good shot on our diver pulling a green Spinny/Sigg's Green Hypnotist fly out 90' on a #2 setting. That diver shot was a real good fish and it peeled a bunch of line off before throwing the hook. I'd bet that was our first West-end King bite! I'll be the first to admit that today was more about exploring the area than it was about actually fishing, so when the wind picked up even more we all decided that it was time to head back to the dock and get to work getting settled in. There were a couple of other boats a bit East of us in the same water depths we were in and on the way in we saw a couple more working the skinny inside water, but I have no idea how any of them did.

We arrived in Wilson at dinner time and after a quick meal we headed out for a real short troll. We set up in 40 FOW and trolled straight out to 225FOW then pulled lines and headed back in. We picked up a Laker on a SS Green Goby spoon down 80' over 120FOW and that was it for any action. So we've already caught as many Lakers as we caught all of last season! We started to mark some fish 100-150' down out over 200-225FOW but it was getting dark so we decided to pull lines and come in. Inside 200FOW the screen was pretty blank. We'll be out tomorrow for a full morning West of port.

Seems to be working on my laptop Stan!

Here's Curt and Eric with one of the many cookie-cutter browns we took on Saturday on my buddy Gump's boat. What a fun day!

NICE!!!!

Hanging out with my family, bow hunting in the fall, or skiing all winter long.

Nice job Jax. Scary stuff, but you did a great job and thought quick under pressure. Glad to hear the guy is recovering well.

I've gotten several messages about where to find that SS Goby spoon. I had it posted in an earlier thread, but here it is again in case anyone is interested: http://greatlakestackleshop.com/index.p ... th=100_103 Fat Nancy's has them in stock locally.

Yeah, that spoon was a hot one yesterday. I tried a half dozen different colors on the other rigger and it only went once when I had an Area 51 on it. We pretty much run our riggers every trip out unless there's just a couple of us and all the fish want are sticks off of the boards that day. Most of the fish were cookie cutter browns, but they fight like mad on that light line. Looks like the wind might mess things up for a few days, but I sure can't wait to get back out there again!

We had red hot brown trout action in Fair Haven today! I fished with my buddies Gump, Eric, and Curt and we had consistent action all morning long and boated a mixed bag of browns, a coho, and a steelie. Water temps were 45-47 degrees and the fish wanted a 2.4-2.8mph troll. Goby stick baits (KA-BOOM's and a new Rapala) and this new Super Slim VQ Green Goby did most of the damage for us today: We were in 9-10 FOW all morning long and I had that spoon parked at 8' on a rigger and it took 6 or 7 fish in about two hours down time today. I was messing around with a few other patterns first thing in the morning but as soon as I put that one on it lit up. East of the chute 2-3 bluffs down was good for us, but it sounded like the guys who went further East did equally well. I didn't hear from anyone who went West out of the chute, but I assume they had as much fun as we did today. Most boats we saw today were hooked up too. The few fish that we kept all had 2-3" Gobies in their bellies, so if you come up, bring your Goby imitations with you and have at it. What a great way to start the season!

WOW! Nice boat Jim! I didn't know you were in the market! Congrats!!!

When the weather & conditions have been right, they've been doing very well out of both ports so far this spring. If you're looking for browns in the next month or so they'd both be a good bet. Best thing to do would be to keep an eye on the reports here and make your decision based on the most recent information available.

Sorry to hear that fenceman. My condolences...

Most of the guys in Fair Haven use 68, 72, or 5.

Chris, We just started running the Super Slims last year so I don't have a full array of them to choose from, but of the colors that we have on board I'd have to say that the Area 51, Holo NBK, Green Eye Glow Ghost, Glow Frog, and Die Hard have been some of our favorites. No, they don't come with the red hooks; that's something that we add, but I will say that when I opened the latest shipment we received the other day I was very impressed with how sharp the hooks were. I set them aside and plan to use them as spares.

My buddy Andy and I got out tonight for a short shakedown trip. The boat ran great and we managed to get some fish slime on the deck, so the 2009 season is officially under way for us! It felt great to be back on the water again. It blew hard all day and the lake was still fairly riled up when we got out there tonight at about 5:30. There was a real dark mud line out to about 15FOW. There was very little difference in the temps between the dark water and the blue water and from the sounds of it on the radio the fish were pretty scattered. Once the lake settles down a bit the fishing should be fantastic along the shore line for browns. Can't wait!! This guy took a new DW Super Slim Die Hard:

Great job rigging it...she looks great! Best of luck with her this season.

Great thread Larry! You're absolutely right....there's a lot more to it than just getting your Captain's license and going fishing. The amount of preparation that goes into it for us is incredible; far more than I ever put into it when I was just fun fishing. For a "part-time" job, it sure feels like a full-time gig to me. I spend a lot of time during the off-season working on my website & blog, emailing and talking to customers, lining up trips, taking care of expenses like dockage, fuel, insurance, tackle, etc. Since folks are paying us to take them fishing I feel that we owe them a top-notch experience, including the latest equipment and a great boat. So I spend a ton of time working on the boat & equipment and keeping it updated. Preparation is paramount. You'll find us at the boat long before the trip is scheduled to depart and long after its over making sure everything is ready to go. As far as the fishing goes, yeah there's pressure involved. Last year in particular was really tough given how hard it was to come by fish out our way. The customers come for the whole experience, and that includes actually catching fish. We definitely work as hard as we possibly can to put them on fish. Believe me, we'd love to put 20-30 fish in the boat on every trip out, but last year there were lots of days when that just wasn't possible. Last year there were a few days when we had to run a lot more miles than we usually do to find fish just to make our clients happy. That really hurt us in the wallet, especially when fuel was nearly $5/gal, but it was what we had to do and I'm glad that we did because we had happy clients. We see all sorts of people on the boat...lots of guys who own their own boats and just want to see how we do things differently than they do, and those are usually really fun trips for us. Other groups are families out for a fun day on the water. I love those trips the most, especially when we get to see a kid with a huge smile on his face because he just caught the biggest fish of his life! Paul is absolutely right when he says that you need to love to watch others catch fish. If you expect to be the guy in the back reeling them all in, then this isn't for you. We get a few corporate groups too. Those can be interesting groups because sometimes guys come out cuz the boss is making them and fishing isn't really all that important to them. So you also need to be able to entertain people who aren't there because they love to fish as much as you do. Others are just a group of buddies out for a fun day on the Lake. Maybe we've just been lucky, but for the most part our clients take it easy with the beer while we're out and save the drinks till we're back at the dock and we prefer it that way. In the end, we do this because we love it and we're definitely looking forward to another season of fun out on the Lake.

Name: Bill Ruth Boat Name: Billy V Name Origin: My first son is the 5th in a long line of William J. Ruth's. We named the boat after him. Boat Make: Penn Yan 295 Prowler Home Port: Looking forward to our first season in Oak Orchard. Formerly from Fair Haven. Years Fishing - Nearly 30. Used to split our time between the Finger Lakes and Lake O, but fish Lake O exclusively now.

We'll be calling Oak Orchard home now Storm Warning II. We'll also be calling Wilson home for the month of May! Boat is supposed to be going in today!