IRISH56

Jeez Fishinman, my buddy sunk a treble in his finger (point underneath the fingernail :shock: ) last year @ 0700 amidst a triple. He managed to suck it up until about 2100 that night. Just teasin', that sucks! DAN

Superhawk - If I recall correctly, I spooled up my two primary rigger rods with the FF and left it there throughout the season. It was my first season with the boat so I was only running a minimal spread at the time. i really didn't like it and junked it at the end of the year - now I have almost as many rods as Splitshot so I keep two rigger rods spooled with the 30# Ande and run wire divers & leadcore when the fleas are thick. Early & late season when the fleas go bye - bye I'll break out the lighter stuff. DAN

OK - some buddies and I are going to camp @ lakeside beach SP and fish for a few days that weekend. DAN

Those are some really nice walleye - congrats. I may have to take at shot at walleye fishing if you can get those on Owasco. The north end is the better end of the lake for walleye?? Thanks. DAN

That sucks!!!!! I ran the 20# FF line for a season and did not like it. You really had to make sure your knots were absolutely perfect or they would pull out. I run 30# Ande w/fluoro leaders during the bad flea times, I really don't like running the thick mono, especially on the Finger's, but you don't have a choice. DAN

What Ray said ... and white. Hey Ray - you fishing the Oak July 4th weekend?? DAN

E-chips, spin doc's w/flies & squids do very well on lakers in Cayuga, I'm sure they'll work well on Canandagiua (sp). DAN

We exceeded our expectations given the late start, high sun and clear water. Heading east we boated two cookie cutter browns and a small rainbow in about 12 fow. We came back west of the chute and found a good stretch of cloudy water along the bluffs with a little better temp, 49.5, and managed a few more browns, including one real decent one, and a SMB. The fish west of the chute were in fairly tight, < 10 fow. Just about all the browns came on a "Hot Steel" Rapala, as did the bass, on 200' leads of the boards. Riggers were pretty quiet, I think we only had one knock off and a dropped fish of the riggers. All in all a decent day, failed to apply sunscreen so I got the raccoon eyes and racing stripes going again this year despite my wife's request to avoid same. DAN

Wow, that's a pig :shock: Hope that's going on a wall somewhere. DAN

Chowder - 180 yards on the reel is fine as long as you are fishing the fingerlakes. Be careful of your knots with the FF line, I gave up using FF as I found a tendency for the knots to slip. Same knots in standard #30 mono hold up much better. DAN

I'm in Scott. BTW - by the grace of God himself I am going to splash the boat this weekend. You gonna be around?? DAN

FF line will work but just keep in mind it's mono and you get a LOT of stretch in it. PITA to release with a moderate amount of line out. Power Pro is good for a braided line but it will get clogged up w/fleas. I like to run PP divers before the fleas get real bad down deep and mono divers up high . When the fleas get thick wire is really the only way to go with divers. We all were a little gunshy of wire but once you get it down you'll never look back. Good luck. DAN

I recall a trip two years ago where we fished in some pretty strong southerlies (15 - 20 mph as a guess) out of Fair Haven that was not bad at all. I have a 17'er and we were trolling the shallows. Depending on water clarity and time of day just about any color stickbait can work well. Naturals, blue, black and anything with orange seem to work pretty consistently. Some days it don't matter what you throw at them they might eat everything or nothing at all. DAN

Will that work???? DAN

You're a decent fisherman Scott but guiding .... come on dude How ya doing buddy?? Got slip #50 in the park. Ice out's coming sooooooon DAN

Plannin' on throwing my hat in the ring this year. Major home renovations going on this summer so I may not have 'em quite dialed in by then . DAN

Darn it Ray, you always beat me to the BEER!! I was pretty impressed with the guys at Henchen's who fillet your fish for ya! DAN

PP - If you're content with the sonar and GPS you have then I would say go for the speed & temp unit & you'll have left over $$$ for some other gear. With the down currents it's sometimes really hard to get a good guesstimate on your down speed, even by watching your cables. There's a lot of value in all three items - i've upgraded over the course of a few years. You've just got to figure out what your personal priorities are as far as the info. you get from your electronics. If you're content with the other two then add the SnT unit and look to upgrade the others down the road. DAN

I have a bit of advice for ya that won't necessarily hit your pocketbook (directly anyways) ... give it some time!! Nobody becomes an expert, or even a modestly decent fisherman overnight. Time on the water will get you where you want to be. That's not to say that equipment doesn't play into it but if you're like most of the guys on here you can't afford to go right out and buy the best equipment and every spoon, flasher & fly known to man .. although you will try, as we all do Give it another season, ask a lot of questions right here and read up on the info. available here. I remember the first couple of seasons for me, not that awful long ago, when I couldn't buy a fish on any set up. It finally started to click and now I can hold my own with some of these guys ... not Ray K. mind you but some of 'em Downriggers are the staple of a good trolling spread, they take some work though to get them dialed in. The Seth Green rigs are essentially downriggers with a whole bunch more spoons, speed and depth of one spoon/combo on a rigger is a little more work to dial it in. Keep after it! DAN

Must be a good job. Beautiful house & property. DAN

Looking back over my yearly diary, which is tremendously out of date, and moreso from my recollection I had a pretty good year. I usually don't do much in the way of fishing this time of year because it is the grace period I give the wife between fishing and duck season :roll: I didn't fish a whole ton this year but I managed just as many fish as I had in the past couple of seasons, and on average I would say better quality fish. The shaker LL's were really out of control this year, I don't keep track of the #'s but there were a ton, I'm hopeful this bodes well for the next couple of years. Outside of a few early trips out of Treman for browns I never left the area between Myers and AES and rarely left the 70 - 150 fow range. Purple/black R&R combinations outshined everything else spoon - wise and accounted for a lot of the bigger LL's & browns as well as a good portion of the lakers. A Stinger Tuxedo a buddy gave me accounted for a bunch of double digit lakers over the course of two or three trips. I heard some guys talking about a lack of bait but I think I saw more bait this year than in any other season I've been out. During the Salvation Army derby the amount of bait was unreal from Myers north to AES. DAN

Nothing spectacular to report from Thursday's outing besides a bunch of sub-legal landlocks, a couple may have been close but not worth writing home about. East side from Myers to north of AES in 70 to 250 fow, best depths were 60 - 80 feet down, a good mix of spoons took just about everything and a white E-chip w/mirage fly out 220 on a wire diver took a few lakers. 10 colors of lead got ripped 1st thing (lost it ) and then produced nadda! Fish were schooled up pretty good, we'd take 2 or 3 at a time and then it would slow down again until you hit another school. We did a triple (3 LL's on 2 rods) towards the end of the day. Pic below is the only decent fish all day. DAN

Split - thanks for posting that - could you e-mail it to me?? [email protected]. LR - that fish was actually jumping 'bout the time I grabbed the rod, up from 75' :shock: , I thought for sure it was on the slider, but it must have rocketed right up as soon as it was hooked. Nice fight, a couple of strong runs and some aerial acrobatics. DAN

Forgot my digital camera (or any camera for that matter) so we don't have any hard evidence :? I don't have the full rundown for ya' but the grand prize fish was a #11.13 (I think) laker and the low end of the laker division was just a shade over 10#. Bass ...... I have no idea (they all looked pretty small to me :roll: ) The dreaded "odd" trout division: 11# Brown 9 1/2# Brown 8.9# Rainbow (Team Splitshot thank you very much :!: ) 8 1/2# Brown 6.5# Brown Split - sounds good, we can burn some of my gas next year. DAN

All - just wanted to say a public thanks to Splitshot for inviting me to fish with him this weekend in the Salvation Army derby, and man did he put us on fish :shock: Saturday we did at least 30 or 40 fish, I know I lost count pretty early on - lot of doubles and one right after another fish when the sun came up. Great day of fishing. He's a fishing machine also, sun-up to sun-down on Saturday and sun-up to 3:30 on Sunday in the pouring rain (and that's an understatement.) Thanks again Scott, I had a great time. DAN