Yankee Troller

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.

I wanted to spread the word out to the LOU community. I was planning on taking a ride to BPS this week to try on some sunglasses. I happen to run into Mike Gustin this weekend at the marina. He owns Webster Eye Care, and he informed me he carried a huge selection of sunglasses. I was under the impression he only sold Maui Jim, but he tells me he also carries Costa, Wiley X, Oakley, Bolla, and a few other brands. Anyway, I went there last night and the selection was pretty impressive. He wanted me to let you guys know that if you are in the market for a pair of sunglasses he will offer us fishermen 30% off in his store. He is a small business owner, and I know we all like to support these places when we get the chance.

We've been trolling 2.5 on the GPS, so your right where you need to be. Key is light leaders, right baits, and location. Some parts of the Lake are better than others for Spring BT.