Billy V

Gillis's is THE place for breakfast in town and their hot open face turkey sandwich is a cant miss for lunch! Pleasant Beach Hotel is a great place to sit on the deck with a cocktail and watch the sun set. Food is pretty good there too.

Can't wait to see the details!

Got any more details Scott? How does someone go about winning the 25k?

We run the 30 for wire and the 50 for our 10 color. Great reels!

Great browns! Too bad about the lampreys though. We won't be in the water for a couple more weeks and reports like this are killing me!

Today my boys and I fished on my buddy Gump's boat out of Sodus. We found some stained and warmer water off of Maxwell creek and the browns were more than willing to play. We had very steady action all morning and I now have two very tired boys here at home. Best lure was a white Thin Fin followed closely by a green/white Jr Thunderstick fished off the boards. We found a pretty good class size of fish today and Wiliam even managed to pick up a decent Laker out of 8 fow. Best depths for us were 8-12 fow and best speed was 2.4-2.6 SOG. The bite slowed for us for a bit when the wind shifted from the SE to the W, but picked back up after it began to lay down again. There's some great fishing to be had in Sodus right now - come on up and get in on the fun!

There was nice color today. As soon as we found some warmer water the rods started poppin'.

We might be able to launch there - I didn't look at it close enough to see if we could get in. We're planning on putting her in on April 1, so we have some time for the water to come up more. I did look at the channel pretty closely and I think we could get out of it with my boat right now. I wish the water was up higher - I'm dying to get going!

Guys, I was just down at Myers park and the launch there has enough water to launch most boats. If you go, be sure to launch on the west side of the launch as it has the most water in it. The lake still has a long way to go to get up to normal summer levels but the channel there is deep enough for most boats to get out.

I will entertain all reasonable offers.

Ttt

It was a beautiful day to be out there - way to go. Can't wait till my boat gets here and we can get our season rolling!

Awesome fish! Congrats on a great day. Can't wait till we launch our boat.

Sorry Lil Jake - I don't have any news on the launch there. Next time I'm on that side of the lake I'll stop and take a look at it though. [ Post made via iPhone ]

We had a decent class size of fish - most were 5-6 lbs with a few pushing 10 lbs. Sure beat watching fishing on tv!

I had an interesting conversation today with Howard Goebel, who is the Canal Hydrologist in charge of lake levels here on Cayuga Lake. He said that the lake is "right at the targeted level" for this time of year, and he is not at all worried about their ability to bring it up according to their target rule curves. He forwarded some information that I found interesting and thought that all of you might like to see. The first is a link to current water levels for Cayuga, Seneca, & Oneida Lakes. Select the lake of your choice to open a graphic that illustrates the daily water levels this year with the target rule curves for each lake. The water levels from last year are also provided on this graphic for comparison purposes. These graphics are normally updated weekly on Thursday mornings, but he updated them this morning so the most recent information is available. http://www.canals.ny.gov/waterlevels/os ... evels.html Also, the Syracuse Post Standard published an article this past Friday regarding Cayuga and Owasco Lake levels, entitled "Exposed Owasco and Cayuga lake shorelines can be deceiving", that can be found at the following URL: http://blog.syracuse.com/outdoors/2012/ ... umn_5.html Howard was very interested in making sure the the right information got out there and was happy to hear that it was going to be posted here.

Gump and I got out for about 3 hours on Friday morning on our buddy Tim's duck boat. We launched at the Coast Guard ramp and made our way west towards Maxwell before setting up. It wasn't as fast and furious as it had been in some of the previous reports, but we did manage to hook 8 browns in the time that we were out. All we put out were stick baits - the best being a chartreuse J-9 Rapala. We had no electronics of any kind on the boat, but I'd guess we were fishing anywhere between 4-12FOW most of the time. The lake was really flat but there was a South breeze that had the color line blown way out so the fish weren't as condensed as they would have been with a NW wind. Our best action came East of Maxwell as we trolled back towards port. All in all a good time and definitely one of the earliest days of trolling on Lake O for me! The fishing should be good from here on out - if you have a trailerable boat get up here and get in on the fun!

I was just down at the launch at Finger Lakes Marine Service (South side of Myers), and the water is so low that any trailer would drop off the concrete pad at their launch and be lost in the mud bottom there. Not a viable option at this point. I'll try to take a drive down by east shore sailing and see what their launch looks like tomorrow.

Tom Burke! Welcome to LOU buddy!! I like the new format and we'll be fishing all of them this year. Time will tell whether or not it ends up being a good move to make such drastic changes, but change comes to everything eventually and we are going to embrace it as a team. I'm very interested in seeing the final scoring system - the further in advance that we have it, the more time we all have to work on our game plans. This new format will definitely make for some interesting team discussions and decisions during the heat of battle! Do we stay put and try to grind out a few more big fish for a good short box? Or do we need to look elsewhere for smaller fish to round out our long box? Do we just try to cash a check on any given weekend or do we roll the dice and go for numbers in hopes of staying in the season-long championship race? This will become a thinking man's game and each boat will have to decide in their own way what their goals are for an individual event and for the entire season. I'm excited about it! From what I'm reading and hearing as I talk to people about this it sounds like consistency will still pay off in the long run, and that's what we're most interested in as a team. Don't get me wrong - It'll be nice to be able to cash a check if we have a good box one day but not on the other. At the end of the day we'd like to see that two days of good, consistent fishing counts more towards the season championship than a few hot days mixed in with some not so hot days. We would like to see the entry fee at $650 too. I'd like to see the entry fee kept as low as possible to encourage as many teams as possible to enter. While we have been competing in the Pro division for a while now, we're definitely not full-time fishermen and probably fish less than many of the Am teams do. A full-time job and a family at home will slow down even the most dedicated fisherman! To those Am teams who are on the fence about competing against the best of the best I'd say this: Give it a try. What do you have to lose? It's been proven over and over again that the fish don't care whether you're a Pro or an Am. The fish don't care if you fish out of an 18' trailerable boat or out of a 42' Viking - each has it advantages under certain circumstances. The fish just don't care. The team with the best presentation and game plan typically wins. Many of you have regularly out-fished the Pros in these events for years. For those of you who are worried that you won't fare well against the best tournament fishermen on the lake, so what? These events are IMO the very best way to become a better fisherman and are undoubtedly the highlight of our season every year - win or lose. We all get our butts handed to us at times - that's part of the game. You can go home with your tail between your legs and never come back again after an experience like that or you can hold your head high, learn everything that you possibly can from it and come back the following event and be better than you were the time before. Imagine the sense of accomplishment your team would have in working your way up the leaderboard over the course of a few seasons. Suddenly you'll find yourselves catching more fish on a regular basis, having more fun, having a lot more friends from all over the lake, and enjoying our sport more than you ever thought possible. Isn't that what it's all about?

Definitely look into the Fish N' Chip - far more detailed bottom contour information on it than anything else from Navionics. It's what we use every day out.

BTW- this is a great deal on a great set up!

I think Rick has found the Answer to his archery dreams!