UpGrady

Gary, Good times! We will ALWAYS remember those days when the Oak was a regular three ring circus every day from April thru September.... and the Ring leader was Capt Marv.... all my best to the family.... and rest in peace Marv...

Anthony, I did not make it down to mine over the weekend, so I hope I did not get hit as well... did you report it to Joe or Jake? I clean everything off mine by the end of September every year for that very reason... nobody is left around and you just can't trust the low life scum in the area to not help themselves.... hope you get stuff back...

I agree with both comments above, you need to check out your bilge areas as well as get weight out of the bow of the boat... but all of that being said... there are just certain boat designs that are downright scary in a following sea.... I am not familiar with the 25' Baha, but have been on many 26, 28 and 31's that do not act that way... what is interesting is that many 25-28' boats are designed for twin screws be in stern drives or Inboards, but have single screw options which completely changes the weight distribution.... I am assuming that you are running a single and do not know if twins were an option but you could be suffering from this design flaw as well. I am running a 25' Grady Sailfish with twin sterndrives and it is an absolute tank in a following sea... I can run 25 mph thru 4-6' following seas without issues... but I worked on a 25' Grady Trophy with a single sterndrive that was scary in a following sea... not enough stern weight and the waves could just spin it as the bow dug into the waves... above and beyond that there was not enough horsepower or thrust to maintain speed to push thru the waves.

UpGrady Fishing Report ============== TRIP OVERVIEW ============== Date(s): 9/6 Time on Water: 6:15-12:30 Location: River to IBay =============== FISHING RESULTS =============== Total Hits: 1 Total Boated:1 Species Breakdown:King Hot Lure: Kelly Green Spinnie/Green hammer Trolling Speed: 3-3.5 Down Speed: 3-3.5 Boat Depth:60' Lure Depth: 100' Wire ==================== SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS ==================== Generally stayed in 50-70 fow where the best screen was. We had One nice Male about 26lbs on the wire diver in 60 fow first thing this morning, but could not turn anything else.. a number of boats working the mouth of the river, reports of fish porpoising, but I stayed to the outside of the pack, imagine they were pulling a few salmon out of that water, but did not look real hot. Worked 50-90 fow all the way back to IBay to end the day with a decent screen in spots but no more action. Probably my last post for the year. Good luck to those who continue thru September as well as congrats to those with fish in the money this year.... another great year on the lake!!!

Foster, Lars was just in town this past weekend... We fished hard Friday and Saturday, he left on Sunday...caught a pile of fish offshore both days, nothing bigger than about 12 lbs though. Hope the fish holds up there for you.

Foster, Nice Lake O Sushi!!!

Jim, Lars is doing fine down in Charleston.... came up for a little brothers weekend, kinda become annual thing for him the past few years. He's been married now for ten years with aboy, Dylan (6) and girl, Dori (2 1/2). Don't know if you know, but I ended up getting my dad's old boat back from Mark 4 years ago. Docking it at Sutter's on IBay.

Fishing Report: UpGrady ============== TRIP OVERVIEW ============== Date(s): 8/27, 8/28 Time on Water: 6am-8pm, 6am-4pm =============== FISHING RESULTS =============== Total Hits: Many Total Boated: Many Species Breakdown: Steelhead, Kings, browns, atlantic, lake trout ==================== SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS ==================== Friday 8/27- Started the morning in front of the bay in 30 fow took a peak looking for browns and stray kings, not much, but water was 63 top to bottom so set out on a north troll. Took a brown in 70 fow on a free slider 50 ft rigger... continued out and found alot of fish in 140-180 to work but only a skippy to show for it...currents were horrible to say the least, so we decided that the most stable and best water was going to be offshore, so we continued out on a northly troll, picked a few random skippers and another brown along the way and finally ended up working 450-480 for the bulk of the day from noon- about 3pm. Pulled a number of steelhead as well as a laker and brown from that water. Two of the steelhead were a matched pair about 11.5lbs, just beautiful fish. Riggers at 55 and 80 with free sliders did most of the work. Orange crush, NBK, 42 second spoons. About three we pulled lines and headed in to grab a bite to eat and came back out to fish the evening in 150-180 and work the screen.... that did not work out in our favor as we threw up a bogey for the evening trip, currents were still horrible and fish did not cooperate. Saturday 8/28- Started in 100 fow and trolled north to about 180 and back into 140 managed a few skippers on a mag wire with mountain dew/crazy b_tch at 290' and 130' rigger but nothing big, so began out trek north again. We picked a few skippies again on the way out and finally hit some steelhead around 420 fow. Worked that area for about two hours with a few more steelehad and skippers then began the north troll again, ended up working 500-530 fow from 11-4pm with many steelhead, rainbows, skippers and an atlantic. Most of the skippers were 3-4lbs, they're growing, had one decent one about 7 lbs, atlantic was about 7lbs, a few steelhead around 6lbs and 3 nice domestics all about 6-7lbs... All in all a great day. 65 rigger with smooth silver glow green and a slider with smooth silver money, 80' rigger with NBK. Wire mag diver at 210 with mountain dew/Crazy b_tch and a 150' wire with glow clown NK28, ten color core with tournament spoon were the best setups.... temperatures were changing, many breaks to work thru and keep track of... all in all there was a very wide band of 50-63 degree water and generally the most active fish were on the high end of the temps and when you marked them they hit. the deeper fish were generally the kings on the divers and deep rigger. Plenty of action especially today and great to have my brother up from South Carolina to enjoy some very good fishing again and great weather. Would've been nice to weigh a fish or two, but very happy with the way the weekend turned out! Good luck to anyone else this weekend, looks like a great stretch of weather to get out offshore and enjoy this fishing! I ended up pretty much on a 195 heading back to port and about 9nm out from IBay...

Thanks guys... yeah I've been on the sidelines myself for a few weeks with family stuff and travelling....good to get back out and wnjoy some good fishing once again. Hope it continues to hold up thru August!

Fishing Report Your Name / Boat Name: UpGrady ============== TRIP OVERVIEW ============== Date(s): 7/25 Time on Water: 6:30-11:30 Weather/Temp: Wind Speed/Direction: w Waves: 2-3 Surface Temp: Location: River Area to IBay LAT/LONG (GPS Cords): =============== FISHING RESULTS =============== Total Hits: 20+?!? Total Boated: 9, I think Species Breakdown: 1 brown, ! steelhead, rest Kings Hot Lure: all Trolling Speed: 2.0-3.0 Down Speed: 2.0-3.0 Boat Depth: 200-260 Lure Depth: 60-90' ==================== SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS ==================== Very hot from 7-9am, slow from 9-10 and then hot again from 10-11.... early bite from 200-210fow then 250-260fow as I picked up got hot again. Fish were marking in top 60, temp was really 80-110' down. Mostly skippies, but had two good ones mixed in. 200' diver early on took a 20lber, then 90' rigger took a 25 lber to end the day. Sliders did very little, but mainline riggers at 60 and 90' were very active as well as divers at 200 and 220' on #2. Brown was on 60' rigger and steelhead was on 90' rigger. 42 second spoon, orange monkey puke and black gold on riggers, Mountain dew/crazy **** and kelly green/hammer on divers did the damage.

Anthony, WOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Nice job... that Spinnie/Fly setup is my fav on the diver... hope it holds for you!

Anthony, A NW will drive temps even deeper than what they are right now in theory...but the way the currents are out there they are acting like we had a NE blow which we have not had in a month. There really is not a thermocline right now it's really still setting up and more of a thermobreak than anything, so the sharp water temp changes are causing crazy currents. Any type of blow (the exception of an easterly) will help stratify and set things up better than what they are right now from a temperature standpoint anyway. Whatever it was sooo nice out there last night and much cooler than onshore.

Fishing Report Your Name / Boat Name: UpGrady ============== TRIP OVERVIEW ============== Date(s): 7/6 Time on Water: 5-8pm Weather/Temp: Hot Wind Speed/Direction: None Waves: none Surface Temp: 74 Location: IBay LAT/LONG (GPS Cords): =============== FISHING RESULTS =============== Total Hits: 5 Total Boated: 2 Species Breakdown: Kings Hot Lure: Trolling Speed: Down Speed: Boat Depth: 180-380' Lure Depth: 75-95' ==================== SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS ==================== A bit of a disappointing evening out there considering what I saw on Monday morning out there. Fish were much more scattered, currents were even worse than Monday. A NNE/SSW troll looked the best on the lines, but it felt fast on the wire and slow on the riggers. Only bites were on turns on the riggers at 75 and 95'. The probe at 95' was running 44-54 degrees dependent upon direction and speed. Fish were very scattered and generally inactive on the screen. We boated two skippers (Both clipped), dropped two others and had one better fish hooked up for a few seconds. I setup in 200 and trolled north out to about 280 before I turned back south, generally it was desolate outside of 300 fow. 200-220 fow seemed to be the most active. I pulled lines around 8pm in 160 fow which was barren as well. Sea fleas were horrible. I've been running 30lb Big game on my rigger rods for 5 years and have NEVER collected any fleas until last night when they were collecting a foot of fleas every half hour. Wire divers were awful, had to clean 2 feet of fleas every half hour as well....

Tom, I only had one non-clipped king and he was the smallest of the bunch, probably only 18".

Fishing Report Your Name / Boat Name: UpGrady ============== TRIP OVERVIEW ============== Date(s): 7/5 Time on Water: 9-11am Weather/Temp: Wind Speed/Direction: Waves: Surface Temp: Location: IBay LAT/LONG (GPS Cords): =============== FISHING RESULTS =============== Total Hits: 12 Total Boated: 6 Species Breakdown: 5 kings, 1 coho Hot Lure: NBK and 42 Second Trolling Speed: Down Speed: Boat Depth: 220-280' Lure Depth: 80-95 ==================== SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS ==================== Got a late start with dropping the little one off at daycare. Just Robyn and I went out. Plenty of action to be had, mostly small kings for us, nothing bigger than about 7lbs. Generally rigger action at 80 and 95', but a few Magnum diver bites at 230' on #2, Kelly green/Hammer fly. The currents were changing at many depth levels as well as the temperatures, so you had to stay tuned to your down speed on a north/south troll. Plan on being back out Tuesday evening.

John, Looks like you broke her in just fine today! Was this the maiden trip? Have not seen you post yet this spring...

Thanks guys... likewise, it was nice to meet everyone and put names with faces as well! Larry, it was great having Steve onboard as an observer too, he's a good person and it was very nice knowing that we did not have to worry about him in the conditions on Saturday. As for Pat, he enjoyed himself onboard despite the rest of your shady crew!!!

This past winter I got a call from Mark Lewis about getting a team together for the Orleans Pro-Am. It made sense that it would be Mark, his brother Mike, myself and Gary Cappon as we all grew up as dockrats on the Oak working for MANY of the captains back in the 80's as well as fishing with our families. We also added our good friend Rob Martin to the mix as he has been fishing with all of us for the past 10 years. All of us have periodically fished as team members in the Niagara Pro-am and Scotty with a number of the Oak captains but finally decided to compete on our own. So, here's the low down on the weekend and hopefully so useful information: Thursday/Friday Prefish- invovled a lot of moving around to find and pinpoint the best water within reason from port. It quickly was obvious that we had a solid steelhead bite with a few mature kings mixed in around Shadagee from the 24-27 north lines with 25-26 being the likely target area. The steelhead were jumbo size mostly in the 8-12lb class, with one about 15 on Friday. Stinger NBK's seemed to be the goto spoon and that would continue thru the weekend no matter where we put them, they produced. Saturday- Mother nature greated us with a suckerpunch in the morning... a bit of an unexpected ENE wind blowing, little did we know it would build into solid 3-5's with some 6's in the mix, but it wouldn't matter, we setup in our target area with 2 five color and 2 ten color cores, 2 divers and 2 riggers and the chaos began. The bite was higher than we had experienced the previous two days, the ten color cores were replaced with 3 colors. We boxed out at 10am which included 3 good kings up to 20 lbs and 6 steelhead up to 11 lbs. One king was on a 5 color core, the other two on sliders on the riggers set at 30 and 40', so even the kings were very high in the water column working over small bait pods around 20-25' down. Steelhead were ripping the cores and a 50' diver. We weighed in early and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon at the dock VERY happy not to battling mother nature. The box weighed in at 95+lbs for a first day total of 215+pts and good enough for First Place. Needless to say we were psyched but wondering what the NE blow was going to do to our water.... Sunday- We left the pierhead knowing that MANY more boats would be heading west into our water and beyond, but after the blow we figured we'd need to be mobile and willing to find new water. After working over our water for a few hours, we could not find a steelhead bite and had one good king, a skippy and a nice 12lb atlantic in the box, we went searching for greener pastures. The bite never really materialized for us in different water, so around noon, with 5 point fish in the box, we worked back to our own water and rods started moving again. We would end up putting three more fish in the box in the last hour including another 16lb king and a decent steelhead. We boxed the king around 12:55 and worked back thru the waypoints but nothing else tripped. Though the last hour was great we will remember the steelhead that twisted a split ring off the spoon, dumping a pair of good kings and throwing back 2 more skippies (7 thrown back for the day) that were just under size. So, we had a good feeling but knew we needed at least two more fish to be in winning contention. Our box was just under 60 lbs giving us around 140pts for the day and a two day total of about 355 pts and good enough for a bittersweet third place finish. All of us had a great time fishing together again and all I can say is watch out next year!!! Thanks to everyone involved in the tournament and congrats to Team Screamer and the boxes they put together both days to win it as well as Bob Cinelli on Hotline for coming close to two in a row!

All Set... thx to those who replied!

Saturday and Sunday June 12,13 at Oak Orchard are the dates. The team captain is Mark Lewis on the Devonian based at Lake Breeze Marina. Please PM me or respond to this post and we discuss arrangements on behalf of the team. Thanks!

Fishing Report Your Name / Boat Name: UpGrady ============== TRIP OVERVIEW ============== Date(s): 5/21 Time on Water: 6:30-10:30am Weather/Temp: 50's Wind Speed/Direction: Calm-NE Waves: Flat Surface Temp: 43-49 Location: IBay LAT/LONG (GPS Cords): =============== FISHING RESULTS =============== Total Hits: 3 Total Boated: 1 Species Breakdown: laker Hot Lure: Trolling Speed: 2.5-3.0 Down Speed: Boat Depth: 90-'-400' Lure Depth: all over ==================== SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS ==================== Overall a very humbling morning on the Big-O... no real good marks, no true temp breaks, overall a whole lot a dead water from 100-400'. Grabbed on laker in 135 fow off the leadcore and two other rips on the 60' rigger slider that did not hook up in about 250 fow. Threw everything at them that had been working for me during the LOC plus some old tricks and not much to show for it.... Other IBay guys... I now feel your pain... temp profile was pretty normal in the lake for this time of the year, but the fishing looks more like the June doldrums.... I can say that there was a very distinct water color change in about 90 fow on the way in that may hold some promise for the weekend. Good luck to all who make it out! Still much better than working this morning!!!

The obvious thing this year is that the average 3 year old fish is much larger than previous years, so there will be many more 30 lbers than we have been used to and likely 40ish lbers will be seen for Fall derbies. In order to see a fish approaching 50lbs it is likely a rogue older fish... the fish we are mainly seeing right now are larger than normal 3 year old age class fish, therefore, it is more likely to see a 50 lber next year or the following year as a rogue holdover of this years larger than normal fish. However, we have not seen this happen any previous year, so the odds are stacked against it.

My brother was ina similar situation on his saltwater forum a few years ago when he posted photos of his first sailfish. He endured an endless barage of e-mails and postings against him taking a protected species out of the water for photos etc... when all is said and done, most of us would have done this very same thing, myself included, but we all need to be cognizant that if a DEC boat was next to you... you run the risk of ticket or more by the letter of the law.

Chris, E to NE are what create the worst upwellings, starts in the western basin and propogates eastward. This is what happened late last week. Saturday the wind turned hard westerly, so the warmer water began stacking back to normal and continued on Sunday. So, Friday was the real ice water onshore and the true need to move out beyond the cold water, but even on Sunday with the warmer water back, the offshore water was still going to be your most "Stable area" throughout the onshore changes. I imagine that the same scenerio from late last week is paying out again on Monday and today. The conditions should stabilize again late in the week with the forecasts I am seeing... although we might see some more easterlies for the weekend dependent upon where these fronts end up sitting.

Respectfully, I understand the limitations of smaller boats as well as time constraints, but after an upwelling with ice water nearshore, your best bet is to go to the more stable offshore water. At a minimum, you should motor out until the water begins to warm again which likely will be at least 8 miles offshore from the Rochester/IBay area. More than likely you will end up a few miles north of this point, but the action will likely be well worth the effort. I was not out this weekend, but Sunday was probably the transition day, where there temperature inversion was disappearing and returning to normal after westerly winds on Saturday. Fishing becomes tough on those days, but the offshore water is still the most stable thru this time period and would have been the area to target once again. There have been decent fish in the area all spring and they should have been in the 100-150 fow zone, but the conditions likely moved them much further north this past weekend.