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Finders Keepers

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  1. Well, I have to say, Rick sure does like blowing things way out of proportion, but it does make for some entertaining reading! First, sorry it took so long to get a post up, I was out pre-fishing the Atommik Event. Second, let's get the story straight, neither myself, nor my brother, have ever referred to ourselves as "Experts". Those we have taken out this year may have thought we were, as we put them on some good fish, and to someone who isn't used to our amazing fishery we may have looked like experts. So please get it straight - this did not come from us.
  2. I fully agree - a wonderful/great event all around, and seeing all the smiles on our guests' faces was awesome!! Kudos to Nick and Teresa - job well done! Count us in for next year!!
  3. Ok, we'll be on Channel 9. Looks like offshore it is...
  4. They look like sweet scales, but may bottom out with the fish we'll be targeting! We'll be heading out in the am, who else will be out tomorrow morning?
  5. Looks like a great day to head to the Red Can!!
  6. We'll have two cameras going and if we are at the front of the pack, we can get the whole group coming out the pierheads...
  7. Going into this past weekend, we had other commitments so pre-fishing the LSRC event was not an option. So it kind of felt liek we were going out blind. Since reports from Oswego were not stellar, we decided to head out of Fair Haven and work our previous waypoints. We headed out a little after 4am and were greeted with a stiff NE wind and a good salmon chop. We got to our first spot over 160 fow and began to sniff around to see what was there - we had 20 minutes before the 5am start time. The screen was blank, so we continued heading northward to deeper water. Soon after passing 200 fow, we started marking fish 60-80 ft down and at 5am it was GAME ON!! We set lines and began to work the fish in the area. Just as the sun started to come up, the rods started to fire and by 7:30am we had 6 fish in the box (5 kings and one brown). So it was time to start upgrading. Only one of the kings was a skip, and the brown was just a little thing, so we knew we had to upgrade those two if we were to do well. Then the port side wire fires and starts heading for Canada!! My brother was on the rod, and it ripped out 700+ ft of wire! Our GoPro cameras had very little battery left, so we waited until the fish got halfway back before turning it on. As the fish came closer to the boat we saw the large shark tail and knew we had a big fish coming in! When it hit the cooler, it filled it and we knew it could be a LOC fish, not to mention a great kicker fish for the LSRC! We put it on the scale and it was hoovering around 32 lbs!! That took care of the small brown in our box, but now do we run it in or keep fishing and try to upgrade our small skip king? A quick check on the LOC board and that would put us somewhere 4-6th place - so we decided to pull lines and head to weigh-in after a quick pic: As I went to turn off the GoPro it was already off - the battery had died! But when?? Did we get us fighting the fish AND landing it so we could go for the GoPro prize?? We wuldn't know until later that night when we pulled the files off the SD card and took a look on the computer...YES! The battery died about a minute after landing it!! We left our dad at the dock with the boat as we went to Screwy Louie's to weigh it in and when it hot the scales it came in officially at 32.2 lbs, good enough for 4th place!! We then grabbed some ice and headed back to the boat to head back out to our honey hole! The NE wind had kicked up some rollers, so it was a bit of a rough go back to our spot and we didn't back to fishing until almost 10:30! There were now several other boats in our area and the fish were gone! We worked east, then north out to 450 fow, then back inside, then west, all without moving a single rod!! At 1:10 we decided to call it a day and play it safe getting to weigh-in as we did have a decent box with our kicker king! Just then the starboard inside wire to a short whack without tripping the dipsy or hooking up. So we left it for a minute and WHAM!! It got whacked hard this time, but didn't hook up! Bummer!! So we pulled lines anyway and headed in. To our surprise, it wasn't too busy at the weigh-in. Come to find out, only a third of the boats caught their 6 fish, and another third never even weighed-in! despite having the 32 lb'er, a 36 lb'er was caught (although they weren't in the LOC), so we missed the big fish (ours was the second biggest), but we did end up taking 11th place out of the 90+ teams!! The LOC fish came on a Rhys Davis teaser behind a white/green dots board, other hits came on white green dots boards with hypnotist and ultra green glow flies, along with seasick waddler spoons. As it turns out, the 2nd place king angler did not show up to claim the prize at the LOC awards ceremony today, so we got bumped up to third! Rough Rider (Nick) also got bumped up a spot, so we both have a 3rd place finish in the LOC with videos, so we're not sure how they are going to handle the video contest... We're off to Tupper Lake for the next three days getting everything set-up there for the first event of the NYS Ice Pro-Am Series this winter and maybe try some walleye fishing there. Then we'll be back to start focusing on the Sodus Bay Salmon Slam. That should be a lot of fun and we're really looking forward to it!!
  8. Nice fish, but not LOC worthy! Looks like a 1' chop...
  9. I agree with Vince - the new format was rolled out way too late for people to injest it, let alone plan for participating. Both the old and the new formats have their positives and their negatives. If more teams participate next year with the current format, I think these tournaments would be top notch - same opportunities to get in the money with higher payouts! We are also in line with Tom - We will play with whatever the format is. We love the thrill and can't wait to hear the next screamin' drag!!
  10. There is a really nice state launch at the Fair Haven State Park. If you get there before 5:30am it's free to get in.
  11. Too bad you didn't want them last weekend! We boated one that was almost 24" long and 2" thick that you could have probably gotten a whole batch of cupcakes out of!
  12. Sorry this is a little late getting posted, I have been trying to recoop from the vigorous fishing the last two weeks! Got out on Thursday to do some pre-fishing in the 6-8 footers. We set down over 100 fow and began working northward. We had a good screen in the 120-140 foot range so we worked those depths westward with the surf. By the time we had made it down to almost Highes, we had boated several decent kings in the upper teens and low 20's, but not the numbers we really wanted for the weekend. Fish came on white green dot spin docs with hypnotist flies and black green dots spin docs with meat rigs. So thinking that the lake had a good chance to flip and we may have to hit browns, we swung in shallower to dial in our brown program. It didn't take long and the rods started firing with browns. We had a good class of browns going - after our 6th hit the deck the average was 10 lbs. For Jack's Big Fish Friday, we started out in the same waters we hit the kings in Thursday (still in the ocean swells) and again banged 3 good kings right away in the upper teens to around 20 lbs before the cold water surged in. Then the screen went blank, so we ventured out deeper to one of our honey holes from the weeks prior. That too was blank with ice water down only 40 feet. So since we already had 3 good fish in the box, we once again went in tight to make sure we still had a good brown bite inside. So we slid back into the 50-70 fow range and started banging browns again, and still with a good size average including this brute: Orange/bronze stinger UV tuxedoes were the ticket and we felt confident for going into the weekend. We headed in to weigh-in and were the first to hit the scales. Our biggest king weighed in at 20.43 lbs and our box weighed in at 53.68. This ended up being good enough to take 3rd place! Here's the BFF board: That evening we received word that the kings had moved back in to our honey hole area and that it seemed like the temps were starting to restabilize. We were joined by Kyle (Apple Boy) this weekend for his first Pro-Am experience. Sat morning we were one of the first out of the gate and shot out to our honey hole over 180 fow. We had 25 minutes to scout for fish and get the rigging ready, so we continued northward and marked very few fish. Temp was all over the place: 35 ft down in spot, then dropped to 80 ft, then back up to 50... Luckily over 240 fow we started marking good numbers of fish and that's where set lines at 5:30. It was a slow pick through the morning, but our fish were quality in the upper teens, and by 9am we had 6 in the box (5 kings and one steelhead about 7 lbs). We then made the decision to run in and run our brown program to try to get our 12 fish, since the bite our deeper was very slow. When we got in close where we had banged the browns the last two days, we were greeted with over 20 boats working the same water! So we gave it a shot for about an hour, but with the high bright sun and the boat traffic, we didn't move a rod and it seemed the browns had shut down. So we packed up and headed back off-shore to to run a high steely program coupled with our deep king program to see if we could up=size our Trophy box fish. It wasn't long and the UV black tuxedo on our 35 ft rigger fired with a nice steelhead flipping and jumping behind the boat! Soon thereafter a nice 9lb steely hit the deck. we continued to work that area with a few releases with nobody home and no more fish. With a decent Trophy Box we packed up at 1pm and headed in. At weigh-in our Trophy Box was good enough for a 6th place finish, and we were in 15th for the Classic Box going into Day 2. On Sunday, our plan was to hit the same area and grind it out this time going for the Trophy Box win, and if we could swing higher numbers, that would also help our Classic box. So once again we were one of the first out the chute and ran to our honey hole. This time we started marking fish right away and we hd a feeling it was going to be a good day! After setting lines at 5:30 it wasn't long before our 220 wire got slammed! After a short fight a sweet 20 lb king hit the deck to start the day!! we then began working a small 1/4 mile stretch that would produce one or two fish every pass through for the next couple hours. We could see the Tom & his Atommik team just on the inside of us, then they took off heading for the inside waters leaving us all alone to work our area. Once we had 6 good fish in the box, our area dried up and we began to go into search mode out deeper. We knew Warren's were working deeper water and had done some good kings the past couple days, so we decided to pick up and run out to their area to once again try to up our Trophy Box. It was a short run and we set lines over 580 fow 15 minutes later. We had two quick shots on the riggers with nobody home and we had a blank screen. Time was running out and we still had one of our top fish only pushing 10 lbs. With 20 minutes left to fish, the port side wire gets hammered as the fish heads for Canada! We decided to make this our last fish and pulled all lines. Jeff was fighting the fish, I was ready with the net, and Kyle was on the outboard throttle in case the fish decided to charge the boat. As the fish came up behind the boat, sure enough it charged the boat too fast for Kyle to floor the motor! We had the port side rigger still 3 ft down in the water and that king wrapped right around that cable! Amazingly, Jeff threaded the wire rod around the cable without getting the dipsy wrapped up and we were able to land a hefty 21 lb'er! We then packed up and headed in. At weigh-in our Trophy Box put us at the top of the Trophy board, 7th in the Classic Division, and we were stoked!! There were still quite a few teams yet to weigh-in, and while we knew we didn't have much chance staying on the Classic Board, we anxiously watched the Trophy Board. After the last team weighed-in, we sat in 4th Place in the Trophy Division, 4th Place in the Overall Trophy Division, and we had dropped to 12th (I think) in the Classic Division. We would then learn at the awards ceremony that our Trophy Division placements had securred the 3rd Place Trophy Cup for the east end events!! Needless to say, we were very happy with the decisions we had made over the past two weeks and the resulting success. Once again, we were the smallest boat in the Pro field and came away with several titles. Congrats to Running Rebel on finding numbers of large fish securring the first place finish (very impressive!), to Cold Steel for another strong finish, and the Thrillseeker Team for a strong finish and impressive slob to top their cooler on Sunday!! While I am sure there will be some tweaks to the new Pro-Am format, it was a great time fishing the three events we were able to fish and we are already looking forward to next year's events!! Once again, I would like to encourage all those who frowned upon the new format and who were apprehensive about fishing against the larger boats, to get in the action and fish these events!! It's a blast!! From the thrill of the shotgun start, to the decisions your team has to make (where to go, what species to target, go for a better Trophy Box or go for a full Classic Box, grind out an area or go into search mode, etc etc etc), to rubbing elbows with the best teams on the lake, to having fun fishing with friends, and so much more - it's why we love this sport and the events we fish!! Again, kudos to Dave Turner and the entire Pro-Am crew for doing such a great job again this year!! I would also like to thank our dad for taking the Observer position, and Kyle for doing a fantastic job all weekend!!
  13. Nicely said Rod. Good luck this weekend, we'll see ya there!
  14. If necessary we can leave a crumb trail for ya Troy (if it's a flat lake, you might not be able to keep up with us)!
  15. Awesome job guys! It's great to see the youngsters getting involved! Keep it up and let the memories keep coming!
  16. I meant to take pics of the leader boards at Sodus this past weekend, but I helped Vince take his monster king over to weigh-in and then never got the chance to snap the pics. I'll try to have our report up later today with some pics. Jerry - Thanks and congrats on your finish as well! Finding numbers of kings in the conditions we had was tough enough, but numbers of larger kings is that much more impressive! Wayne - I love fishing against the bigger boats and the competition! Once again, we were the smallest boat in the field and did very well beating many of them! How sweet is that!!?? Again, it's not how big your boat is or how much gear you have, but rather how well and effective you can run your program and adjust to the changing lake conditions. Dave did a fantastic job running the events this year and we're already looking forward to next year!! It's amazing how much goes into setting up these kinds of events (we're getting a first-hand look as we set-up the first ice fishing pro-am series scheduled for this coming winter). Cudos to the entire tournament staff!! For those who have not fished the tournaments, I encourage you to try at least one next year. It's a blast and like Jerry mentioned, even if you don't make it into the money (and with the new format there is lots of opportunity to do that), the experience is well worth it!
  17. Yeah, that would work. We could broadcast when we catch one and the info for catching it. However, no one else would be able to say much though, as we will be broadcasting so much!
  18. Great idea Nick!! Put us down for two more XL's for our vets too!
  19. My vote is for lobsters! No, seriously, the fishing is the best it has ever been. I agree: don't change anything!!
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