Iceman

I run a Fish Hawk & have said this before, you need to get a proper battery strength meter to test your batteries with. I think many of you throw your batteries away too soon. I can get several outings on one battery with no problem. I will second the bulk buy of 9V Duracells @ Sam's Club!!!

I hope to be out on Sunday, hopefully mid morning to mid afternoon. Lund 21' Newport center console. See you there!

Trolled the channel Saturday afternoon after the storm blew by. Caught a 3 man limit of 9, culled the live well twice for a total of 11 keeper size eyes (just kept 9). Also caught three perch, one of which was 13.5" long, and they were fat. Took fish on copper (200 foot section), inline boards with deep divers, & riggers as well. It was nice to have everything working. Had several 2 to 3" shad in the live well, and saw a lot of bait on the screen. This is prime time for Oneida Eyes!!! Left before dark closed in. The DEC visited us on their large outboard powered glass boat. Flashed our licenses & showed our life preservers & they were on their way. [/b]

Set lines at 4PM straight out of the chute in 150' of water & found 48 degree water 135' down. Ran a 4 rigger program, as my wire divers can't get that deep. Had bait and fish on the screen. Went 7 for 7 with six kings. Biggest king was 25. 10LBS on my scale, with two more at 22.5 & 22.1. The rest were over 15 lbs. Caught one 5 pound brown while letting a rigger down, & the biggest king grabbed the last rod with a flasher fly about 20 cranks into the final retrive while we were pulling lines to go to port. Glad I was holding on to the rig tightly, becaiuse the fish took off 200' ft of line on the first run. Sunday, set lines by 10 AM large waves 3 to 4' footers, and they continued to build throughout the day. Went 3 for 3 on Kings, no good sized ones though. Got off the lake when the waves got to 6 to7' around 4PM.

Ball Bearing Sampo's #3 for flasher flies, # 1 for spoons. They last a very long time. I have found the Sproos to have a weak snap compared to the Sampo's.

You can never have enough power, as Captn. Kirk said "more power Scotty" Also the DF 50 khz signal will show your rigger weights at any depth. I have the 337 DF & it has served me well. You need to run this unit on manual to get the best performance. Be sure to set the noise filters to off or next position above off. I have marked, fished, & caught Kings below 150 FOW with my unit.

My boat ended up 3rd in the spring LOC in Salmon division, Peter Bolton was the lucky man. Just had a salmon bumped off the board last Wednesday (John Mydlinski). Looking for bigger fish tomorrow out of Fairhaven.

Jerks; Was using the bright green 8" E-Chip with a green and silver Howie 19" back (top of the loop to the hook end). Ran two of these as the deepest sets, with spoons above them. I believe the flasher fly draws them in & they were more comfortable grabbing the spoons.

Was 18th on Sunday (Salmon Division) now holding down 20th & soon to be gone (Mydlinski) caught on my boat last Sunday in Fairhaven.

Set lines in 150' of water at 7AM, went 8 for 10 on kings. Fish weighed from 15.5 to 22.9 lbs ( 22.9 lb fish is # 18 fish on the LOC board-Mydlinski), soon to be bounced. Three fish on flasher flies, five on spoons (NK-28's). Saw no fish or bait on the screen all day, but had a slow steady pick all morning. Did most of the danmage at 190' down 85 to 105'. Trolling down speed was 2.5 to 2.9 mph in 45 to 48 degree water (Fishhawk). Wish I did not have to work tomorrow@#%$*^!!! They are out there, go get um.

Arrived @ Olcott 5-2-07 @ 3PM. Got settled in to our rental house & launched the boat and tied it up in our slip in the town dock. Prospected for several hours around the red barn & Wilson that evening. Ended up fishing the bar most of the week, as there were large numbers of fish in the 90 to 200 foot range. The calm waters allowed us to run down there easily, haven't had this ever before. It was hard to manage more than 5 or six fish per day. Best day on Kings was 5 with two just under 20 Lbs. On the last Saturday of the derby, it was becoming rough & looked like it would stay that way, so we trolled into the waves to the East towards the Somerset power plant out of the Olcott Pierhead. About 15 minutes after setting the last of our 4 rigger rods, we picked up a nice coho about 12 Lbs. Reset the lines & landed a 19.5 Lb King, soo close to being a weigh fish. Reset the lines & that is when we landed the #3 king in the derby (Peter Bolton). We caught the fish on a green prochip with a silver green krinkle fly I had picked up from Ernie Lantigne (Fish Doctor) a month earlier, as he said it would be a good early morning bright day offering. We were in 160' of water at the time & the King came 71' down, our best speed was 2.7 to 2.9 on the Fish Hawk. Found that I had to run my four rigger set up way back to consistently get bit (shortest lead was 80'). Two Green Pro Chip flashers & Howie flys on the back corner riggers & black & silver NK-28's on the out & downs. I was the Red Lund with the vinyl cover (from the nose of the boat to behind the center console seats (very toasty with the cold water) 175 Yammy outboard for main power & a 9.9 high thrust Yammy four stroke for trolling (with trollmaster). Reserved the house for next year & hope to be as lucky then. The weather & water was outstanding!!!! There was an enormous amount of debris in the water, stumps, logs, doors, full sheets of 3/4" thick plywood & plastic everywhere. The floating debris got my transom transducer on the 6 day. Snapped it off, was able to tape it to a stick & clamp it to the transom, it worked fine. Just ordered it's replacement today (Lowrance LMS 337 Dual Frequency $138 including shipping). Guess it will become my spare when I get the replacement mounted.

Hey Longline; At 2 mpg, you must have been trolling at approximately 80 miles per hour MPH. What a great fish to catch at such an unheard of speed.

Diel, Am interested, do you have any pictures of the modification you speak of.

Some of the harbors i am interested in are Olcott, Sodus, Fairhaven, Oswego.

Have been using Shimano 8 ' Talora Roller Guide rods for the last two years, & have very good luck with them. It is so much easier to land a fish due to the very reduced amount of drag from the roller guides vs the reqular guides & twili tip. Still keeping my two Heartland 10" ers with the twili tips for back up though!

Three of the four Blacks releases on my boat are 10+ years old. They are slid onto the DR cable just above the swivel for attaching the DR weight. I put a crimped sleeve on the main DR cable between the legs of the release that the cable slides through to keep the release next to the DR weight. By the way, I had to replace one of the four because lost it to the bottom of Cayuga Lake. These releases are adjusted to troll cut bait for salmon on LO, as well as dialed down to work perfectly on Oneida Lake walleye & perch, thats right I get a few every now and then when trolling for walleye. As far as I am concerned, Blacks are all I need.

I have used a few Stinger spoons in the past, & the paint was good for one nice spring king, & then it was gone. I also have had problems with Stinger spoons being bent by a good fish. Once they are bent up, there is no good way to straighten them out so they run correctly. I know the paint has improved, however I still am peeved that they would sell an expensive spoon with defective paint. Guess some of us are very forgiving.