Yankee Troller

Thanks guys! The winners definitely did their own thing, and they deserve the win in a tough event.

Friday - Given the cold water temps we thought it would be best to head West in practice. We fished the Jordan Harbor area, and went 1 for 2 on Kings in the skinny water pulling Reef Runners. On our Cannon downriggers we also took 3 Coho's, a few Lake Trout, and a 12lb drop back Steelhead. Nothing real promising, but after doing a little networking it seemed as if there weren't many Kings being caught. We trolled back to Port Dalhousie and we noticed some great emerald green water right out front, and the temp was a degree or two better than we'd been seeing all day. We made a pass through there and hooked a nice 18lb King. The next pass was good for another Coho. It was time to head in to weigh-in so we couldn't explore that area much more, but it was something we wanted to try first thing in the morning. Saturday - When the horn sounded half the field went right, and the other half went left. Three boats stayed right there and did a slow roll out to the water right out front. We started deploying lines in 20' of water, and worked out. It seemed like it took forever for the first bite, but we were boxed with 5 Salmon by 7:30am, and we continued to pound on them from there on out. Our spread consisted of a spoon on each of our three Cannon downriggers, a wire on each side pulling a spoon, a 5 color core pulling a Dreamweaver green dot Spin Doctor/A-TOM-MIK Ultra Green Glow on an in-line, an in-line pulling a frog colored Reef Runner, and a 10 color down the chute which we shortened/lengthened depending on the depth we were over. Our top spoon in the morning was hands down the Dreamweaver Sea Sick Waddler in a regular size. After the sun came up a Dreamweaver Superglow Hot NBK became the MVP. At one point we tripled on the fly, a spoon, and the Reef Runner landing all three Kings. We worked the 30' range for most of the morning, but as the sun came up our screen looked better in the 40-50' range. This is also when a Stinger Wonderbread got hot on the 10 color core. Heading into weigh-in we thought other teams had to of smashed them too. When we hit the dock it seemed like most teams were reporting tough fishing, and one or two fish in the box. We weighed almost last, and when our fish hit the scales it was 20 pounds heavier than the next team. We were pumped, but with that came nerves, and the knowledge of knowing we were going to be followed Sunday morning. Sunday - We put down the same spread, but this time we had half of the field fishing with us. The screen was just never there like it was on Saturday. We stayed in our water for four hours and went 1 for 2. Around 10 we made the decision to run to the bar and try to catch 4 Coho. We set-up on the Canadian side of the fence, and we weren't able to get our Coho spread out when a board line pops. We were into our first Coho. It took a Challenger Lady Bug, and about a net length away from being netted it does it's death role and cracks us off. We weren't planning on fishing Coho this weekend. We broke out our Brown Trout rods never checking the leaders, or switching out the 8lb Flouro leaders. Lesson learned on being lazy! We gave it the rest of the day, but all we could muster up were a bunch of healthy Steelhead and Lake Trout. In the end it was another tough day for the field, and that Coho wouldn't have done us a darn thing. We had enough weight on Saturday to only drop us to 2nd place, but it was still a great start to the 2013 tourney season! Here was Saturday's box:

Jax turned me onto this and I have to say it is a great method! I have only had 1 salmon go belly up on me from this method, and that's because an older gentleman took a year and a day to bring it in. I am going to get video of this method sometime soon, and share it with you guys.

I have to disagree with this statement. It should read to run your lines as close as possible. Water clarity will dictate the leads you will need to run. Longer in clear water, and shorter in dirty water. We find that 100-150' leads work best most of the time. You want to avoid longer than needed leads. Your hook up percentage starts to tank when your running long mono leads. There is a lot of stretch, and most of the times with L or ML action rods you just cant get the good hook up. BT fishing is really very simple and people tend to over complicate it. First off location is key. Be where the colored water is. Lure selection depends on water clarity. Speed is something we don't spend too much time with. 2.0-2.5 will work most times. Lighter flouro leaders in clear water. That basically sums it up.

We've been running Daiwa Heartland 9' 6" diver rods for copper for about 7/8 years now with great success. They are fairly cheap rods at around $40. You don't need special eyes for the copper. When it comes to reels I only know that a Dawia Saltist 50, and a Penn 340 will fit 300' of copper. I would imagine a Tekota 700 would also, and for Okuma I have no clue. I can tell you that a Daiwa Saltist 50 is fast, needs no drag upgrade, and will last a long time. We've had 300' of copper on them for 5 seasons now, and they only seem to get better with age.

Most people are running 45lb copper on Lake Ontario. Different manufactured copper have different twist rates which affect it's depth curve. The tighter the twist the heavier the copper is per foot. With A-TOM-MIK copper the rule of thumb always has been 22' per 100' out with a spoon, and 20' per 100' out with an 8" paddle going 2.5mph. This varies with currents and water temps. My suggestion to you is if you aren't keeping the fish for consumption, or fishing tourneys, then don't go over a 300' copper. You can still get that on a fast reel, and generally you can revive a fish caught on that. You can achieve 60-70' with that rig.

I am on Cannon Pro-Staff so my comments can be a little biased. Their dual axis are built like a rock! I overheard one old time captain last week say they looked to be "over-built", and more than what we need them for. My only complaint are the end caps popping off, but what companies rod holder caps don't?

You see me roll by? I thought I saw a boat fishing near Sandy last night. For god sake will you freakin smile in a picture of your first king of the season!?!?!?!?!!??!

If they are everyone is tight lipped about them. There really is just Spoonpullers to get reports from, and it's been dead so far this year. The Salmon are over there, and the tourney fleet will put a whoopin on them this weekend!

Saturday was a blow of day which allowed us to do some work to the ‘Yank’, so when Sunday rolled around the decision came up again. Do we go to left or right after this big blow? An experienced local captain who runs the ‘Hooked Up’ boat simply said in a text the night before “Go West young man.†We were boat #2 out of the Genny, and West is where we went for the first time this season. We set up at Russel Station in 10-15’ of water and headed West. Water was dirty brown from the beach out to 12/14’. We made the decision to slide out to 15-20’ of water and the action began. We had a slow pick from the ponds to Braddocks. To be honest I was getting a little nervous that the fishing was going to be terrible. I should have known better! The last few hours of the day were very productive, but it took getting into the right water to figure that out. We were running the same spread that we’ve ran the last few weekends. 6 - board lines, our 3 Cannons, and two split shot spoons. Our best stick of the day was a white/chartreuse rogue. Hands down it produced the most fish, but a Rapala J-11 in GFR, and a Rapala J-9 in Chartreuse also took a fair share of fish. On the riggers a Stinger glow cupped frog was consistent. One thing we noticed today was the presence of Coho. We landed three of them, but we also saw our first Chinook and Rainbow of the season. We were an Atlantic Salmon away from the Lake Ontario Grand Slam, which would have been really cool for these guys to accomplish. The best water was West of Braddock point hands down, and it got clean enough that we were able to slide into 12’ of water by the end of the trip. Well, that’s it for Spring Brown Trout trips! This week we head to Canada to start the 2013 tourney season. I’m gonna miss the little speckled guys, but Mr. Chinook is waiting!

Carp.....I don't know if they had those frames. Call and ask for Mike. Like J&J said.....he will answer your questions and he's very knowledgeable. Also, let him know about not getting called back. He might make it right.

Usually you can head out a little deeper than mentioned above and get into some nice sized Lake Trout too.

I ordered the Fisch 580g. I need large frames for my head. The Fisch fit great and offered a lot of protection while netting, which is a huge concern of mine. I went with the silver frames and the silver lens. I also grabbed a pair of Maui Sport sunglasses for driving. Those are really light, and fit great too. Again I want to state that without going and trying on a bunch I would have not known which ones fit the best. A lot of them fit OK, but when I put the Fisch on I knew they were the ones.