Billy V

This is really cool: My 5 year old could dock a 40 footer with that system!

Great report Eric! That new tent looks HUGE.

I forgot to add that we experimented with the new Chamberlain's release over the weekend, and we're really impressed with it! We had the horizontal adjustment set real light and were still able to crank the rod tip all the way down to the water. It's a very slick release!!

I was walking out of Screwy Louies over the weekend and I ran into Lester Zimmerman and we had a nice chat about the Memorial that he & Tom Allen from ATOMMIK are putting together in memory of his son Shane who passed away unexpectedly last September. They'll be presenting the Shane Zimmerman Memorial Big Fish Award during the Fair Haven, Mustad (Oswego) and the Little Salmon River Challenges. They'll be offering the same type deal as they did for their Oswego Net Pen project with a Tekota 800/copper/Ugly Stick combo up for grabs at $10.00/chance. The $1000.00 that they hope to raise will be split 3 ways for the 3 largest fish (1 per event). A first place big fish plaque & cash award of $350.00 per event is the goal along with one lucky angler walking away with a $350.00 Tekota/copper combo / A-TOM-MIK Fly package. There's details here: http://www.atommiktrollingflies.com/zim ... morial.htm We put in for it, and I thought you guys might like to know more about it.

In a word...SLOW. We had fantastic color and temp in tight but after 2 hours of trolling in that great looking water we hadn't moved a rod. So I made the decision to head out in search of silver fish and within 15 minutes of turning us out we were rewarded with the biggest fish we've taken so far this year: Check out the LOU Shirt!! NICE!!!! The King weighed in at 16 lbs and took a Northern King seasick waddler fished down 25' off of a rigger. We had the spoon stretched back 50' and we were pulling 2.2mph out over 70FOW. The fish really put up a great fight and we had quite the time bringing him to net. Kudos to everyone on board for pitching in to help land the fish. We worked our way out as far as 200 FOW and we found a small pocket of water out over 170 FOW that held some fish and we looped it for most of the rest of the day and that's where we managed to take this small King. While we were out over 170FOW we had a new Siggs Rigs Glitter Glow Pulse fly/Green Spinny fire twice while fished behind a wire diver out 180'. It didn't sound like anyone in Fair Haven set the world on fire on Saturday as we listened to the vhf, and we confirmed that back at the dock. I sure wish the catching had been better, but the fishing with a couple of LOU members was a lot of fun and I was happy to at least put that nice King in the boat.

No fish falling out of coolers and back into the Lake YT??? We've had a couple of observers who were so completely hung over that they were totally and utterly useless...it was all they could do to write the fish on the log for us. And they were both pukers too...nice. Hint for those of you going to be observers...it's a whole lot more fun and you'll learn a lot more if you actually go to bed and get some rest the night before!

YT, there's two versions of it out there too...this one and a super-secret new one that I just got in the mail yesterday. Stay tuned!!!! Ray, I'm SHOCKED that you found them at Dick's...they still have inventory from three years ago on their shelves and NOTHING new at their store in Ithaca.

When the browns are in shallow (April, early May...on the beach) it's mostly stick baits for us. But once they start to move out to deeper water we do very well on them with spoons...Wednesday was a prime example of that...30FOW, spoons near bottom.....FISH ON!!

Most guys use either a Willis knot or an Albright knot to attach the leader to the core. I use the Albright. http://www.animatedknots.com/indexfishing.php Maniac posted pics of how to tie the Willis knot not too long ago.

Thanks guys. We were inside the actual bay fishing for them. The wind came up and got pretty snotty so we had to pull lines and head in. We've had success trolling for them in the bay before. You just need the right conditions, and we had them yesterday! And Stix is right...here's what happens when you rush to get a pic of the fish:

We left the dock shortly after 5am today and ran out to the lake and set up in 15 FOW just East of the chute. The lake was fairly calm and there was a mild NW breeze as we got set up. There was a nice color line and resultant temperature break and once we got set up we began working that break. Within 10 minutes of getting set up a red/black squiggles KA-BOOM Shiner goes screaming off the planer board...FISH ON!!! After a short fight, Marcus landed his first-ever Lake Ontario King...a very healthy 10 lb beauty: No sooner did we get that fish in the boat and it began to blow. And it got cold. And it blew harder. We went from flat water to 4-5 footers in just a few minutes. Just before we decided to pull up and head in Alex boated a small brown on a black/silver KA-BOOM Shiner, and just before I pulled the last rod Marcus hooked up with a great steelhead that gave us a neat aerial show before it shook the hook at the back of the boat. That steelie took a Northern King Sea-sick Waddler fished 7' down off a rigger. The wind was continuing to freshen and it was getting downright sporty out there, so we headed into the bay to troll for a bit. I'm sure glad we didn't call it a day. We started seeing hooks on the 585 and I set up a program and had us fishing down 20-30 ft over 25-35 FOW. Over the next couple of hours we hooked up a bunch of times and landed quite a few beautiful browns. Best down speed was 2.2-2.4 on our Depth Raider. We were running our spoons 50' behind our Shark weights today (they don't spook browns like some guys say they do!). They were mostly interested in our Dreamweaver NBK and Beefeater spoons and a funky new Northern King spoon that I don't have a name for, but here's a pic: We also took a brown on that same KA-BOOM that I mentioned earlier: Working the Bay definitely made our trip...we found nice colored water and 54 degrees down 25ft. We kept some fish for dinner, put some back for another day, and had a few "long-distance" releases...all in all it was a fantastic day when Mother Nature was feeling mighty blustery. The NW wind definitely had shoved some temp up on shore...let's hope it holds for the weekend!

Nice videos Mark...sure makes me wish we'd come to the West End this year!!

Ben, The boat name is Billy V II. Not sure how much I'll be out that particular week....I'll be in Florida for most of it!

Mike, Leadcore typically comes 10 colors to a spool (300' long). They color it at the factory so that you can easily tell how much line you have out. Leadcore will sink at a rate of about 4-5' per color that's in the water. We had segmented our cores into shorter sections and ran them off of our planer boards. The 2 & 3 color cores were working the top 10-15 FOW. Copper is run much the same as leadcore, but it sinks faster. We had a 600' copper set-up that we ran down the chute with only 100' of the copper in the water. That set-up probably got us down 20ft or so. A wire diver is a dipsy diver that we were running on a rod/reel spooled up with 7-strand stainless steel wire line. We had the diver set on a #2 setting and had let out 90' of wire, which probably had the diver down 30' or so. We keep the boat at Anchor Resort and will be there Wed. of this week and then again all next weekend. If you want to stop by I can show you these setups firsthand.

Mahone 82, Check this report: http://www.lakeontariounited.com/fishin ... php?t=5410 We did pretty well out of Fair Haven last weekend...lots of details in that report.

Moto, Check this thread out: http://www.lakeontariounited.com/fishin ... php?t=5075 That should help you out!

Hot action in the first hour and a half today, then a slow pick the rest of the day. The hot ticket of the day for us was a Northern King glow/pink frog, but we also got bit on a Lazer Glow Spook that I painted in my shop, a KA-BOOM red/black squiggles Shiner, a Northern King Orange Crush, a Siggs Rigs Glow Ghost Pulse Fly/Double Crush Glow White Spinny, and a Dreamweaver Steelie Cane. Two and three color leadcores worked well today as did our 100' Copper rig, a wire diver out 90' on a #2, and downriggers fished in the top 20'. Best down speed on our Depth Raider was 2.2-2.4 mph, and we worked 80-140FOW the entire day. Best fish of the day was a 16lb King:

We're all really excited about it and I'll be sure to post info here as things move along.

We run both behind our Sharks with a lot of success.

Tom, Check to make sure there's no water in the probe. I accidentally overtightened the end cap on my old Moor once and we got all kings of wonky readings. Turns out when I overtightened the end cap that it put a hairline fracture in it and I had just a tiny bit of water in it and that make it act all funky.

I'm happy as can be to announce that thanks to the hard work of Capt. Jim Jared and Capt. Bob Geis, Fair Haven has been approved by the DEC for a pen rearing project for next season. We already have a bunch of volunteers lined up to help build the pens and to feed the fish. We'll be pulling together fundraisers over the next few months to help with the costs. Word has it that we've been approved for something like 9,000 steelhead and 54,000 Kings for next year, all of which come from the Sterling creek allotment. I'm looking forward to doing what I can to help out. Many thanks to Jim, Bob, Popeye, the DEC, and our friends over in Oswego for showing us what needs to be done.

I also emailed Dan about what CBish had heard about the pre-2006 parts not being stocked. Here's his response: Bill, This statement is not true. We are committed to standing behind our product from a service standpoint and will continue to have service parts available for older Cannon downriggers. That does not mean we will have every part for every Cannon downrigger ever made. The caveat would be on parts where a material or component goes obsolete on us and we are unable to source the item or find a suitable substitute, which can be a challenge over time for any company where product improvements and technology advances are made. Dan Bennett

Great fish Gray Fox! Did you weigh it for the derby?? We lost a slammer at the back of the boat on Saturday while we were playing with the steelhead offshore...broke my heart.

Congrats on putting two fish on the LOC board bro! Your hard work and dedication really paid off.

Yeah, it was cool to make the move and BAM!!!!! Fish ON!!!