Yankee Troller

Saturday morning: Steve and his buddies came up from Pittsburgh, PA to fish with us today. We heard all week how tough the bite got, but ya can't catch them from the couch! We had our bites today. They just never stayed buttoned up. [emoji19] At one point we dropped six in a row. We started in 70' of water, but reports of some fish in 250-300' pulled us out there. We fished over some great screens on our Humminbird's. The bait is already moving offshore, which might be a little early. Nothing was "the man" today. We took a few shots on meat 180' out on a diver, couple bites on 5 colors, copper from 150' to 400', and our best presentations were various spoons on our Cannon Downriggers. Spoons that fired today were Rosta Goose, Rodfather, Midnight Special, UV NBK, and Salmon Viagra. Saturday afternoon: Jerry and his gang from Eastern PA joined us Saturday afternoon for some Niagara county Spring Salmon. They saw the morning report about tough fishing, but they were pumped to hit the water. We started in 250' of water West of port and worked out to 315'. Screens came and went. 30 minutes into the trip and the 400' copper pulling Familiar Bite Pacific Herring takes a hit. We fight it for 15 seconds before it's gone. That's when we went dead for over an hour. We told the guys the last hour would be our window of opportunity, and it did not disappoint. It all started with 10 colors of FishUSA Stealthcore pulling a custom Moonshine that we found in some Lake Ontario tackle shop. After that we took a few fish on a DW glow Roy Boy, which is a FishUSA custom, down 90' on our Cannon Downrigger. We had a DW Midnight Special go down 75' on a Cannon Downrigger, and lastly 140' diver pulling familiar bite Pacific herring took a fish. It wasn't fast and furious, but we took what was given to us. These guys had a great time, and made some fantastic memories. Sunday morning: Max and crew joined us from Williamsport, PA today. We left the dock around 5:30am and headed to where we have been fishing the last few days out in 250-300'. Bite was tough again, but we landed almost everything. We also found some bigs! Sea Sick Waddler was the man today. The DW Mag was good on an A-TOM-MIK 300' copper, and then we had the UV version going on 10 colors of FishUSA Stealthcore. Familiar Bite Pacific Herring was good for our last Salmon that came 150' down on our Cannon Downrigger. Observation of the day: the larger Salmon didn't have small bait in their stomachs. Everything in there was mature. Sent from my Pixel 5 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

I'd say anything less than 5 colors. Could be 1, 2, 3, or , 4 colors of leadcore.

Saturday morning May 8th - Karen, and her family joined us from Ohio this morning with LOC derby tickets in hand. Unfortunately, we didn't put anything on the leaderboard, but we smashed her other goal of limiting out on Salmon. We had to quickly get anything a Coho would eat out of the water this morning before they boxed out on them. 2 colors of FishUSA Stealthcore pulling Bay Rat Lures Fat Rats in orange, and 5 colors of FishUSA Stealthcore pulling 6" DW Spindoctors/A-TOM-MIK Coho flies did most of that damage. After a few hours without many King bites we made a few phone calls and we were West bound. Set up half way to the bar and the screen was amazing. The fish had turned off though. For the rest of the day we picked away at them. Most fish took A-TOM-MIK flies, or Familiar Bite Atlantic Herring strips. Fly colors that took fish were Glow Blue Hammer, Big Fin Glow, and Glow Stud. Divers fired from 150-250', downriggers from 50-150' down, and 300/400' coppers. Saturday afternoon May 8th - Dave and Bryan from PA are back AGAIN! They just can't get enough of this Lake Ontario fishery, any I don't blame them one bit. Our Saturday afternoon charter started out fairly slow. Three hours in and we had two bites. By 8pm we had all the action we could handle in an hour. It all started with a double on wire divers. One fish took an A-TOM-MIK Glow Stud behind a Green dot DW Spindoctor out 225', and the other took a chrome/dew paddle pulling an A-TOM-MIK Pro Am fly out 150'. The green dot would fire again while we were cleaning fish. Our deep downrigger fired pulling Familiar Bite Atlantic Herring down 100', and we had a DW Raspberry Dolphin go a few times on a 65' rigger with a Firecracker SS slider. Lastly, the 300' A-TOM-MIK copper pulling a new DW UV Rodfather took a Nice Salmon. Sunday morning - Easily our best Salmon day of the season! 40+ bite day all while looking for that LOC derby fish with these guys from PA. Left the dock at sunrise and headed to the West where we would fish the 6 mile creek area to the red can in 65-170' of water. Early morning it was all spoons with the DW UV Rodfather being "the man." This pattern was developed by Warrior spoons and we've ran it for years. We ultimately wanted it in a DW Mag version because we LOVE the action and size of this spoon. We've had it for about three weeks now, and it's killed a lot of Salmon. Other spoons that went were DW Sea Sick Waddler, and Raspberry Dolphin. Once the sun came up we started to take more bites on Familiar Bite meat. 100-150' down on our Cannon Optimum downriggers is where we had it parked. We also had it on a 300' A-TOM-MIK copper that went a few times. We started with Atlantic Herring, but ended the day with Ballyhoo. Sent from my Pixel 5 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

I also run 15-18" leads for the Coho flies. You can run a little faster for Coho, but we typically just toss them in our Salmon spread and they do fine when the Coho are around. Some days they want the 6" spinny (Chartreuse-Orange Crush has been our best as of late) - 6" Spin Doctors and some days they like Thinfish (Fluorescent Red-Yellow and Red-Black Squiggles (UV) are our best) - Thinfish

Saturday morning - Mother Nature delayed us a few hours this morning, but when we did get out it was game on! Tom and crew drove from Syracuse, NY and joined us for their annual Spring Salmon fishing charter. We smashed our first King on the set up, and then we got into a Lake Trout pick. While chatting with a fellow Captain he mentioned some Coho bites on his short cores. We sent out a couple 5 color FishUSA Stealthcore rods loaded with DW 6" Spinnys/A-TOM-MIK Coho flies and just put a whooping on the Coho. So, thank you Matt Yablonski for that tidbit of info. We ended the trip going 3/5 on Salmon, boated 15 Coho, and landed a handful of Lake Trout. It was a great multi-species morning! Saturday afternoon - Second trip of the day was miserable if all you looked at was the weather. The fishing......Pretty good! Jessie and gang traveled all the way from Massachusetts to fish with us this weekend. As do most afternoon trips it started out as a nice pick and turned into a fire drill. We spent the first few hours playing with the Coho. Red thinfish on 2 cores, and yellow/orange 6" DW Spindoctors/A-TOM-MIK ludington Coho flies on 5 cores. During the last hour we went 3/4 on Kings. All took different offerings. One took an A-TOM-MIK Glow Stud fly 150' out on a diver, one took a blue meat rig 100' out on a diver, one took a Rodfather mag down 75', and one took a red Thinfish on a 2 core. How's that for patterning a chew......[emoji2957]. Back at it again in the morning! Sunday - Jessie and his gang from Massachusetts came back for more this morning. We set down in 50' right out the front door and quickly got on the bite. We fished in 50-60' for most of the morning and had a really good pick of Salmon. Unfortunately, we had a case of the dropsies. Around 10am we slid out to 120-140' and finished out our box of silvers. The man today was a DW UV Rodfather mag on our Cannon Optimum downriggers. Inside it worked 40' down, and out deeper it fired at 75'. Other things that took fish: > Red Thinfish on 2 cores > Yellow 6" DW Spindoctors/A-TOM-MIK Coho fly on 5 cores > DW Mag Sea Sick Waddler on a 30' Cannon Optimum > DW Orange Slurpee on a free slider > DW UV Green Jeans on a 300' A-TOM-MIK copper Back at it again next weekend! Sent from my Pixel 5 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

The other thread was about the lack of BT. I think that's more of a stocking goof up. The fishery seems healthy. Looks like there is more Smelt than we've had in recent years, and the 2020 class of Alewife are very strong.

Yup, we ran 4 inline boards on a side with 2 flat thinfish, and two 2-color cores with 6" spinny/A-TOM-MIK coho fly combos.

Not even paying attention. Just fishing marks.

April 24: Morning - What. A. Day! Dave and his crew from Western Pennsylvania can't get enough of Lake Ontario. This is their third outing this Spring. We spent most of the day in 70-80' of water, and the Humminbird's were lit up with targets all day. We couldn't get our Cannon Optimum downriggers in fast enough. We pulled DW spoons on our out and downs. UV Rodfather and UV Green Skirt Mags fired all day. Center rigger was loaded with an 8" DW Spindoctor white double crust Glow. Our divers pulled 8" DW Spindoctors with A-TOM-MIK Glow Blue Hammers and Ultra Green Glow flies. One side we dedicated to Coho, and we went 3/6 on Coho. Other side pulled FishUSA Stealthcore in 5 & 10 colors behind Offshore OR-12 inlines. Afternoon - Shawn and friends, locals from Rochester, were looking to learn a little bit about trolling. Taking a charter is a great way to cut down the learning curve! Our afternoon charter was much slower than the morning. We still had targets on the Humminbird SOLIXs, but the fish had lockjaw. We ran the same program we ended the morning with. We swapped out some lures to try to entice a few extra bites without much luck. One new spoon that went tonight was a DW Martel. 10 colors of FishUSA Stealthcore and our Cannon Optimum downriggers, all pulling spoons, took all our afternoon chews. Back at it in the morning! April 26: Morning - We lifted enough fish over the back of the Yankee Troller for one weekend! Dave and crew from Western Pennsylvania joined us again this morning. We started in yesterday's water, and after an hour without a nibble we knew something had changed. A few phone calls confirmed it wasn't just our program. Up went the Hail Mary. We were Westbound and down. We settled in at the 00-02W lines and found 100-150' to be the zone. Steady pick from 40-125' down. Mostly Chinook, but we pulled on a few Lake Trout as well. We mistakenly left the meat at home, but the chew for us was all flasher/fly combos. Hey was our program: 75' Cannon Optimum pulled a double crush Glow 8" Spin Doctor/A-TOM-MIK Glow Stud. Divers were firing out 100' on 2 settings pulling Wonderbread SmartFish/A-TOM-MIK Glow Blue Hammer and an 8" paddle\MC Rocket in an A-TOM-MIK Stud meat rig. 300' of A-TOM-MIK copper pulled a Wonderbread SmartFish/A-TOM-MIK Glow Hammer and a 2Face SmartFish/A-TOM-MIK Glow Stud. FishUSA 10 color Stealthcore pulling a Green Jeans chip/A-TOM-MIK UV190 and a UV Glow Green Alewife. Our out and downs were quiet with various spoons all day, and our Coho offerings were never touched today. We'll give those Salmon a rest for a few days, but we'll be back next weekend to continue the beat down. Sent from my Pixel 5 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

I there's plenty of data to sound the alarm bells. I could see if Rochester was still catching them, but we fish dirty water and they're not there. You can fish warm water discharges, and they're not there. Good days have been 2-5 bites in colored water. Those days typically yield 20+ bites. We have a missing class of fish becasue when you do catch one it's quality. They've been eating gobies for many many years. We catch them all Winter with bellies full of Gobies, but they still hit sticks and spoons that don't resemble Gobies in the Spring. We've had some great colored water off Rochester and the bite is non-existent.

My opinion is something happened with recent stockings. The fish you do catch are all quality older fish, but those smaller Brown Trout just aren't there.

Not allowed until July.

Saturday: This was definitely the Spring for BIG Brown Trout, but certainly not the year for numbers. On this mornings charter we took our best Brownie of the Spring. It weighed just under 14lbs, and ate an all White Bay Rat S3 off the surface in 20' of water. That being said there's Silver chewing up West, so that'll conclude our beach fishing for 2021. Sunday: Dave was out with us a few weeks ago chasing Brown Trout, and when he saw we had an opening today he jumped at the opportunity. We left The Oak around 6am and took a 10 mile trip West. We found great screens to fish over in 50-80' of water. We ended the day with a couple Chinook Salmon, three Coho Salmon, and a handful of Lake Trout. Best spoons for us today were Glow Green Alewife and Rod Father. A-TOM-MIK Stud fly took one of the Salmon, Ultra Green Glow took a few Lake Trout. Downriggers 35-55'down, divers 70-90' out, and FishUSA Stealthcore in 5 & 10 colors run behind Offshore OR 12 inline boards. Sent from my Pixel 5 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

You'd need a Hummminbird with a Lakemaster chart card, and a Minn Kota trolling motor with Link.

Link hooks into a Humminbird. Non-Link doesn't. It may work with you Humminbird if there is an Ethernet port. You don't need Link to get the AP function, spot lock, and cruise control. The Link function comes in handy if you're trying to follow a contour, or head to a waypoint and spot lock. Let me know what you're looking to order. I sell them at Krenzer Marine. Trolling motors are on a national back order, and some of my customers have been waiting months.

Ya, that's been calling me. It was tough not to head out there this weekend.