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That's a fatty! congrats! Nick

any time you come out with some $... it's a win

Sounds good, we'll be up Thursday night and out fishing Friday morning if the weather cooperates. Nick

weather report says 1 foot or less for Saturday... just like it did last week

haha we're just not used to those big fish yet this year! There were some monsters out of Sodus this weekend. I weighed my 27lb 12oz fish in and was in 1st place (not grand prize but first), then another guy weighs in his 28lber, drops me to second, then you weigh in your 28lber, drops me to 3rd, then another guy weighs in a 29lber, drops me to fourth... it was a rough couple of hours!!!! haha. We had some seriously destroyed tackle as well, but boy wasn't it fun!?! I need to buy some line this week, my rigger reels are just about bare! Nick

Great job guys! You really had them figured out this weekend. Weren't those waves on Saturday fun!? Nick

Fishing was amazing this weekend. Not sure how everyone finished in the challenge cup, I didn't stick around for the ceremonies. Nick

First off, let me apologize for coming up a bit fast behind the pro boats on Sunday morning... I wasn't hitting the horn to be rude, I was just asking for someone to make room so we could get by, sorry if it came across that way... and thank you to the boat who finally moved out of the way so we could sneak by.... WARNING: Meat rack shots Thursday morning: Fishing had been down right aweful out of Sodus so far this year, so we started the day off for browns... trolled 60-100fow and never moved a rod. We knew the steelhead had been around all year, and we could hit them if we needed to, so we attempted for a few kings. We figured if we could get 3 kings each day we'd finish in the top 5 the way the past couple of pro ams went (very wrong). So we put our king rigs out and headed out to 150fow... then rods started firing as fast as I could put them back down. We stopped fishing just after noon as we would have to for the pro am and went 7 for 15. We had 5 kings and two steelies (only kept one of them). We didnt' stay on a spot as we were searching for fishing spots for the weekend. The fish just seemed to be anywhere we went. The kings hit all the way out to 450fow and the steelies anywhere from 450-550fow. Size was only averaging around 10lbs, but it was a great day of fishing with just the wife and I! Friday morning: Our third teammate for the pro am Jack (Echo One) joined us for some pre fishing. We had called him and rubbed in the previous day, fully expecting for fishing to return to it's normal slow pace the next day. We setup in 100fow and put our program down, even let him put some of his lures down with their stinky jelly on them and his girly pink dipsey off one side It didn't take long at all for rods to start firing. However, by the 6th fish I was really getting worried. The day before, the wife couldn't keep a fish on the dipsey and so far Jack was 0 for 4 on fish and my wife still couldn't keep a fish on the dipsey. Now it wasn't all their fault with tangles and bad luck, but still, 1 for 6 was not a good start!!! We finished 9 for 15 by a bit after noon and again hit fish all over the place! I managed to not lose a fish in the two days pre fishing and gave Jack, or O-for as we began to call him a real hard time.... well karma sucks and that would come back to bite me! Saturday morning: I dropped the paperwork off over at the tent and headed back to the boat. One thing I'd like to suggest for next year is letting us hand our paperwork in either the night before or earlier as 5am doesn't really leave enough time for those of us docked at other parts of port to get back to our boats and to the pier heads in time. But we got to the pier heads just as everyone started heading through the channel. We were one of the last boats out and I got to test out the new boat's speed a bit. It was pretty cool hitting 40mph and flying past some of the competition! I could only imagine their thoughts when they saw they were getting passed by a BAYLINER! Well by the time we setup, it was starting to get rough. I'm not quite as hardcore as some of you guys and so I always fish with the waves, so we headed East. It still didn't take long for our observer to start barfing, but at least my wife didn't get sick and enjoyed herself. We again started hitting fish immediately and started off with a nice 20lb king in 140fow. We then hit the 27lb 12oz king that put us on the LOC board. Almost as soon as I got the rigger down from that fish, another fish hit and it was BIGGER. The 27lber I had trouble getting to the boat due to the waves pushing us, this fish I couldn't budge once it surfaced. It was only 20 feet from the back of the boat laying on the surface and I just couldn't pull it in. After pulling on it for quite some time I was worried sooner or later the hooks were going to pull loose, so I tightened the drag and tried to drag it in.... POP! *#@*#!!!! I know it was bigger than 27lbs, and was probably the only shot I'll get this year at a 30lber and worse yet, after giving Jack such a hard time for losing fish pre fishing... I just lost a major during the tournament We hit a dry spell from 9-11 where we just couldn't get anything to go... the waves were pushing us all over the place and I had my probe up at 30ft after getting all three riggers tangled (at one point I brought up the starboard cannon ball on the port rigger ) I finally dropped the probe down and saw there was a large different between speed at 30ft and 100ft, so we slowed down and that seemed to be the trick. We took a couple of more fish to finish the day with 6. We were in 7th out of 28 after the first day. And only that one nice fish we lost out of first Here's the big king... can you guess it's fun loving??? Sunday morning: Ever have one of those days where it starts out so bad you just know the day is going to suck? Well at 5:00 the other team's observer hadn't shown up. I went over to their boat to see if they had heard anything... nothing. So we called her... and woke her up I didn't want to make the other team give up a member so I told them if they waited to leave until she got here, I'd wait also. A big thanks to Team Addiction for handling the situation so well. It was very frustrating to be standing at the dock listening to the amateur teams be released... the observer finally showed up and we headed out, maneuvered through the pro boats, left the pier heads and headed west. We knew the fish would be a bit further west today and as we got about 5 miles west I thought I felt the engine lose power. A bit frazzled, I turned it off and turned on the kicker. The waves were coming too hard to fish against them with the kicker, and I was a bit nervous about the engine. So I made the decision to stay out front of port in case the waves built and the main engine wouldn't work so that we could safely make it in. In hindsight, I should have taken the time to troubleshoot the engine, but we were already running late and I didn't want to take any chances with my family and friends on board. It ended up hurting us though as fishing outside of port was extremely slow. We had friends calling us all day telling us to head one way or another, but we would have had to run and I wanted to save whatever life the main engine had to get back to port. We ended the day early to make sure we could get in on time if we had to troll. The main engine ended up being fine, it was all in my head. Better safe than sorry I guess, but still kicking myself a bit. We ended up with only three fish and dropped to 13 out of 28. Again, that fish we lost would have put us in the top ten All in all it was a really fun weekend. We did better than half the amateur boats and some of the pros in our first pro am on our boat and we got on the LOC board for the first time! We had great fishing with good friends and got to see a lot of you guys that we only see at the pro-ams. In terms of fishing, the fish were all very deep. Temp was 62 degrees down to 100' then dropped from there. We hit fish on the riggers mostly early from 90'-130'. Dipseys were hot mostly later in the day, my Ruff Rider special (Mt. Dew flasher with Mt. Dew fly 22" behind) set on a 1 setting out 350-380 took the majority of our fish. We also took fish on a gold/blue spinny with gold/blue fly, black/pearl spinny with green fly, and a few fish on just about every other lure we had out. The leadcore was good for a few steelhead out in the 500fow range prefishing, but didn't budge in the shallower water. There was a nasty current out there and we had a LOT of tangles this weekend. Heavier than 12lb balls would have been a big advantage! Ran two dipseys off one side all weekend also and worked out real well. Even in rough water, no tangles. Sodus was the place to be last weekend. I think 13 out of the 20 LOC salmon spots are now from Sodus! I'm glad to see my home port on the board for once! Although, I have the feeling my favorite fishing spots may be a bit busier come next summer Nick

The outcome of the investigations was that they were going to need to add another NYS tax to the gas prices in order to pay for further investigations

Get well soon!

Bob, we had our ears open... none of the "non pro" Sodus regulars got wind of anything... Nick

haha we had lost just as many Thursday and Friday, then managed to lose only one during the tournament... and it was huge Nick

27lbs 12oz (see post above for details) Nick

Glad everything worked out, I heard the call and went over to my GPS to try to figure out where you were, I marked your spot and asked my team if they were ok with going to help... by that time people had already responded... great bunch of guys out there this weekend! Luckily you had an outboard, if that was an inboard you would have been in some real trouble. I know one thing for sure... about 5 secs later I checked to make sure my bilge pump was working Way to smoke em on Sunday too!!! Nick

If you didn't catch fish in this tournament... you weren't using hooks... I'll post my full report tomorrow, but here are the results... Nick

Stix you'd better look into that. I believe the first place fish was caught Sunday as well. If you do, let me know where I finished too Nick

I'll post pics of the board tonight or tomorrow morning. Nick

oh ok I didn't realize that! All I know is my LOC fish was in 1st Saturday at noon and had dropped to 3rd by 3pm, then 4th by the next day Nick

A lot of fish were out of temp this weekend. I was reading 62 degrees down to 100 or 120' and then there was a break where it dropped down to 58 degrees, down 150' I had 48 degrees. I personally don't have what it takes to fish below 130', but we took plenty of fish down 90'-120' and 350' to 400' out on the dipseys. Nick

Just out of curiousity, if they don't find a "cause"... wouldn't you be a bit nervous taking it out again? I was really hoping they'd figure out what happened so we could all make sure to double check our boats! Nick

Glen you had one hell of a weekend buddy.... big fish to big trouble ... let's hear it!!!!! Nick

Not sure if the board has been finalized but looks like I ended up in 4th with a 27lb 12oz king. It hit on an area 51 stinger down 90 feet over 210fow. It was rougher than hell (6ft waves) and I had a ton of trouble getting it to the boat, we had to turn against the waves. Thanks to Rod (Lucky Enuff) for showing me the Area 51 lure last year and thanks to my team mate Jack for netting and my wife Theresa for driving! Pictures to come... Nick

Fishing with Team Lucky is a blast and I highly recommend someone looking to try out the Pro Ams give it a go! I did last year and got spoiled with a 2nd place win!

Rick, The fishing was just crazy up there this weekend! It's amazing how fast things can change, up to this week we had only boated one ten pound king out of Sodus... we hit over 30 kings from Thurs-Sunday. Just crazy fishing. It was simply an awesome time. Nick

basically, go to the point Nick