Yankee Troller

The big one was just under 20lbs. That coho was more impressive for the spring. Sent from my XT1080 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

They are big, and there were a lot of big ones! Typical Spring Lakers piled up West. They pull pretty good too!

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!

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I personally wasn't close enough to the boarder to see if anyone went over the last two years, and no teams submitted any protests against it. You can speed down the QEW and get away with it until you get caught. Kevin has given the captains the ability to sit down and discuss this rule and any changes for future events. He has done his HW on this and talked with both agencies. He's tried to get us a free pass for the day, but they wouldn't have it. Instead of complaining about it to us try to lobby your government to change the rule. Work with us and not against us with this issue. Complaining and ****ing on forums does nothing but give people a bad taste about tourney fishing. It does no good for the sport, or any of OUR events.

How do you call in with No Comm? Nope, they didn't. They fished out the front door, and last year Pacific Time won it inside of the US boarder. It was won the first year in Canada when it wasn't an issue to cross over.

I wanted to fish Canadian waters, and made sure my team was clear to fish over there, but when I called I was told calling anytime other than when we crossed the boarder would be invalid. That's the biggest problem here is Canada can't give a straight answer. Some people are told one thing others are told another. This is why huge fines were given a few years back when there were grey areas. This wasn't an issue the first year of the event because the rules changed after that, and the last two years there was no real need to go to Canada. As a matter of fact if you did cross the boarder in the last year or two during this event you were breaking a federal regulation for not calling into customs, and if you called you broke a rule of the tourney.

Here it is guys! Oak Orchard Open will take place on June 7th & 8th. Deadline to enter the tournament will be May 23rd if paying by check, and June 2nd if paying by cash. Entry into the event will be $400. You can now begin to submit your entry fees. To register by mail - Please provide this registration form and a check for the entry fee to: Oak Orchard Open 96 Vista Dr. Rochester, NY 14615 OOO Reg Form.pdf

June 7/8

It's June 2nd Brian. We needed time to get the monies in the bank account. It would be too hard to do it on Saturday when we are all fishing if guys paid at the Captains Meeting. We'd hope everyone would have their monies in by the check deadline, but figured if someone hit it big the two weekends prior they might want to get into the OOO.

I'm hoping to have the Registration form up by the end of the day bud. Just waiting on the committee to sign off on it. Taken from the form: Deadline to enter the tournament will be May 23rd if paying by check, and June 2nd if paying by cash. Entry into the event will be $400.

Tournament Limit Catch is 10 fish. Only 5 may be salmon. The other 5 must be trout but may not include more than THREE lake trout. Legal Limit depends on how many guys you have on-board. If you fish with 5 guys like we do then your allowed 15 silvers and 10 LT. Does that clarify it?

Thanks Greg