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Sweet Caroline

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Everything posted by Sweet Caroline

  1. Sweet Caroline
    Lake should be very fishable in any wind that is 10 knots or less.
  2. Sweet Caroline
    I got the coated net with the largest hoop and 6-9 ft extendable. Love it
  3. Sweet Caroline
    Just got a Beckman from fishusa. Best Net I’ve ever used.
  4. Sweet Caroline
    Was hoping to report out on the lake real time but had poor connection. Lots of kings and steelhead today between the Genny and Braddocks. Kings up to 22lbs and jumbo steelhead. Went all the way out to 400 FOW, but best king bite was 200-220 fow. Never really made it much past Braddocks from the East. Fishing 80-90 down on riggers and free sliders took a few steelhead too. Came in to 175 fow at 10 am and trolled East from Braddocks. Steelhead one after another until the last pond when we pulled at 11:30. No mvp lure today although most kings came off various spin docs on dipseys and steelhead on various spoons off riggers down 80 and on free sliders. Carbon 14 in the early morn, NBK, custom blue chartreuse nk 28 probably the best late morn. Was cool to see fish porpoising chasing alewife on surface first thing in the morn. Looked like Sharks with dorsals out of water. Didn’t mark a single bait school all morning and fish marks were scarce as well, but rods were snapping! Hope this helps and good luck out there.
  5. Sweet Caroline
    Same here. Good luck
  6. Sweet Caroline
    Lil slow today. Went all the way out to 400 fow. Best depth was 150 Fow or so on a 10 degree down break. Right where all the floating cottonwood was is where the fish were. Steelhead on a 3 and 6 color, lake trout down 50-60. No salmon.
  7. Sweet Caroline
    “What depth did you hook up with the salmon?“ 165 FOW on a six color
  8. Sweet Caroline
    Maiden voyage with my 4 yr old today. Didn’t leave dock until 4:30. Plan was to bottom bounce with gambler rigs. Set up in 120 FOW, made it out to 170. Took 5 minutes for first fish and then ended up with one more, and a couple lost. Screen dried up for lakers on bottom past 140 FOW, but lit up with suspended fish. I put out a 6 color with a green silver evil eye and immediately hook up and lose a screamer. Wife calls, time for dinner back at dock at 6:30. Mission accomplished.
  9. Sweet Caroline
    Never mind. Searched for some suggestions and went with the Beckman from fish usa
  10. Sweet Caroline
    Lost my net today. Anybody have a recommendation? Had a extendable rubber coated net from Dicks that worked good but don’t no the make and model.
  11. Sweet Caroline
    Braddocks was my go to spot when I trailered my boat. Can’t beat the Sandy to Braddocks area in the Summer IMO. Easy access to deep water if you head NW. Always good brown and lake trout fishing in close too.
  12. Sweet Caroline
    Active fish that are moving fast don’t always mark well on fish finders. Sometimes you see a dot dot dot or “ghosts”, but generally solid marks are stationary or following fish. My observations are the best fisherman usually are very detail minded and will put in the extra effort. Those who change lures often, motor just a little further, tie the best knots, sharpen their hooks often, check lines often, pay attention to patterns, etc, etc tend to have better overall performance. There are always days that despite everything you are doing you just can’t make it happen. I’ve had days when boats around me hammered fish and I struggled and vice versa. Consistently catching fish can be a lot of work. There is definitely a balance of feeling like you are at work and exhausting yourself out there or just enjoying your time on the boat fishing and relaxing. As far as eliminating water is concerned some general tips are stay away from cold, clear water, move further offshore as the season progresses, and know that a NW wind brings warm water in and a NE wind brings cold water in. When searching I typically go N or S and will do a circle if I have a good screen even if I do not get bit the first time through. Maybe change up my spread and continue to circle a couple times to see if I can trigger a bite. As the saying goes, never leave fish to find fish. Sometimes the act of circling itself will get rods to fire as the lure changes direction and pulls away from a following fish. Think of shaking a toy in front of a cat. The cat will watch intently but won’t strike until the toy is pulled away. The thermocline will be set up In July so that helps eliminate a lot of warm water near the surface, usually top 50ft or so. Where you start is a matter of personal preference. In July there is an inside bite with browns and lakers in less then 150. FOW. Kings can be mixed in, especially earlier in the month or Sandy to Braddocks if you are fishing the Rochester area. Or you can start in 150 fow and go out from there looking for kings and steelhead. I prefer the later. As the month progresses the inside bite for kings can be hit or miss and I’ve found going further offshore (up to 500 FOW by the end of the month) is a better bet for finding kings. August, I’m almost always fishing 300-500 plus FOW and then back in to 100 FOW or less, temp permitting, by the end of the month (Usually Labor Day) and September fishing browns and mature salmon. When searching in the Summer, I always do a temp check in 120 fow or so before setting. I’m checking to see if the temp is too deep, 100 plus ft down, or too shallow, above 40 ft. If either of the above is true, I know stable, more productive water where the thermocline is usually 50-80 ft down has moved offshore. That water can usually be found 250-500 FOW. Not to say that fish cannot be caught in those conditions, especially when the thermocline is pushed deep. I just hate fishing 100 plus ft down and prefer to see if I can find cold water up higher so I can run a better spread. I will keep motoring out and do down temp checks along the way until I see the down temps getting better. I then set up and go North from there. Much of this is a matter of personal preference and there are better fishermen on here then me that may have a whole different take. Many times the fish have their own agenda on where they prefer to be and will throw a curve ball to the norm. For lure selection I have a morning/low light lure box (white cups/glow, etc) and a midday/high light (Silver/UV, etc) box. Normal Summer days I’m changing over around 10am to my high light stuff. Also, I never run orange/red/pink below 35 ft or so. Lures don’t stay out more then an hour if not bit. I tend to go “All in” on a color scheme once I find what’s working and will have 8-10 spoons of the popular patterns in my box. Some days I”ll have all my riggers with the same spoon with cheaters if there is a strong preference to a particular spoon. I can go on and on. The best advice I can give you is to ask a lot of questions, always observe and learn and be open to trying new techniques. I’ve been doing this 35 plus years and never thought of running more then two dipseys. Observing others around me that are successful doing it made me think, why not? There are certainly days when the dipsey bite is hot so why not capitalize on it. Hope this helps and good luck.
  13. Sweet Caroline
    Buying a new reel for slide diver. The one I have now has braid on it from 15 plus years ago. Any recommendations on what line to get?
  14. Sweet Caroline
    I want to purchase a third dipsey rod and run two on the starboard side when conditions warrant. I upgraded all my rods to ugly sticks. I’ve been told to use a shorter rod on the inside. Ugly stick has a 7ft medium action rod that I’m thinking of using as the inside dipsey rod. Any thoughts on using that rod as an inside wire dipsey? It’s rated for 12-20lb. The normal dipsey rod is rated for 12-30lb so I’m not sure it cam handle the stress of wire and a big king. I want to pair that with a saltist 30. Any suggestions on what wire line to get as well. Trying to get everything from fishusa. Thanks in advance
  15. Sweet Caroline
    One of my first memories of fishing LO was the Irish Thunder. You knew you were in the right spot if he was nearby. Definitely a pioneer of the fishery. He will always remain in my history book. RIP Captain Joe
  16. Sweet Caroline
    Anybody know if they still barge stock any browns in Lake Ontario. Will they be doing it in 2020? The cormorants just hammer them when they are shore stocked.
  17. Sweet Caroline
    I heard peanut butter works. Was going to try it myself. Anybody ever try it? I’ve used it before for light polishing on other things.
  18. Sweet Caroline
    https://www.glangler.com/blogs/articles/will-natural-selection-save-our-salmon-by-jim-bedford First I’ve heard of Kings eating gobies. Also reinforces that a warm Spring is best for alewife survival in that an early thermocline traps plankton earlier higher in the water column thus allowing less bottom filtration by mussels. Also, interesting about some of the adaptability in the life traits of salmon populations in certain rivers. Probably less of that in LO due to more unsuitable habitat.
  19. Sweet Caroline
    Got this guy hooked on trib fishing today! Case in point, both times l took him water was high and muddy and only browns would bite. Steelhead were non existent but browns kept us playing. Also, reinforces my point that browns are a 12 month fish. Boat photo was his first lake fish, also a brown!
  20. Sweet Caroline
    Stock more browns! The current food chain can support it. Gobies eat zebra mussels, browns eat gobies. Browns offer small boaters near shore fishing opportunities year round and also can be caught in many tribs Sept-April. They are the heartiest and most adaptive of all the salmonids we have here in LO and a great game fish. They are a win-win for everybody. They also catch and release well and are homebodies. Steelhead come and go with the wind in the tribs, frequently get lock jaw, whereas browns will pretty much stay in a single stretch of a trib all winter and continue biting day after day. Same in the lake. Browns can be found near structure in less then 100 FOW any time of the year providing opportunity for all boats, big or small. They also can be caught in more off colored water which frequently happens in the tribs. I can’t tell you how many times browns have saved the day on a trib when I got there and it was “blown out” from rain or run off. Steelhead completely shut down in those conditions yet browns still remain active. Imagine being an out of towner and faced with those conditions on your trib trip. If only steelhead were available your trip would be dead. Having browns around would at least provide them an opportunity to catch a respectable game fish when nothing else will bite. I’ll also add they are also a great pier fish Spring and Fall. I had some of my young cousins sending me pictures of huge browns they were catching off of Webster pier this fall. They could care less that they weren’t catching salmon. They are a great addition to both the lake salmon fishery and trib steelhead fishery. If either fishery is slow, browns can keep rods bending. In the Fall when staging salmon fishing is slow, Lake trout fishing is considered the go to for many. When you are targeting lakers that pretty much is all you are going to catch though. Salmon can be caught right along with browns late August on in to the late fall, thus filling some of the down time. It’s my opinion that having an abundant supply of browns available will help in promoting the fishery and keep folks coming back. It’s one fish that the lake likely can support more of with little impact on our current bait population. I believe folks from the DEC frequent this site. I’m hoping this can at least be added to the lake management discussion. If it is a hatchery capacity issue then maybe find a way to increase the survival after they are stocked. One thing I know after witnessing many browns being stocked is they pretty much don’t move for days and weeks on end. Cormorants and other predators could easily decimate a pod of fresh stocked browns. I’m proud to say that I took my 6 year old trib fishing for the first time last week and we were 1 for 3 on browns in 15 mins. He was cold and wet after a short period but thank god there were browns around. my two cents
  21. Sweet Caroline
    Gambler...Ah Sam Dattilo...he was my Great Uncle. That explains your laker catching ability:). Just out of curiosity what does have the most diverse diet? Browns, lakers, Steelhead, coho... I rarely put any fish under the knife so it would be interesting to hear from others. I’m sure it is season dependent to some extent.
  22. Sweet Caroline
    Good point Gambler with closing sections. For a time they closed Orwell and some of the other feeder tribs. Who wants to catch salmon once they are up that high, at that stage of their life, in such a small trib anyway. Let them do their thing at that point.
  23. Sweet Caroline
    Rolmops, I hear ya, but Michigan has seen a huge rebound of 35 to 40lb salmon in 2019. They estimated their wild contribution to be even higher at 60 + %. I think size will come back some once we have a better balance. Agree that stocking reductions alone won’t have as much of an impact as it did in the 90s due to natural reproduction and pen rearing. Problem with natural reproduction is it is unpredictable with boom and bust years. I think the DEC uses 50% as an average but some years it could be higher or much lower. 50% is a misleading number though when it comes to total population. 50% of 2 million is a vastly different number then 50% of 500,000. Stockinq and pen rearing artificially keeps the population consistent, but that doesn’t mean the wild population will be as consistent. In a natural environment there is usually symmetry between predator and prey abundance. When prey abundance is up, predator populations follow. My guess is that our Chinook natural reproduction is lower right now. Usually the same environmental conditions that cause a prey population to shrink, in our case cold winters, have the same affect on predator survival. Plus the YOY chinook that do hatch have less of a chance of survival because their main food source isn’t as abundant, slowing their growth rates and making them susceptible to predation themselves. To a lesser extent the same probably happens with our stock fished although they have a bit more of head start on their growth from the beginning. I’m sure there are some years though where our pen reared and stocked fish have better survival then others. The reduced stocking of lake trout though, for the most part, probably does directly impact their population over time since they do not have the reproductive success of chinook. My guess is that with all the great chinook fishing the adult lake trout population has rebounded after years of being hammered in the 90s and early 2000s. That, along with the cold winters, has likely played a role in our current alewife population. Lake trout aren’t the massive alewife eating machines that chinook are, and reductions in their stocking numbers certainly will have less of an immediate impact on current alewife predation, but over time they take their toll. We could not stock any chinook at all, totally protect our spawning population once they hit the tribs and have them naturally reproduce. We will have years of great fishing and years of poor fishing but both the predator and prey population will be in perfect balance as usually happens in a natural environment. Then again, their is nothing natural anymore about our current Lake Ontario ecosystem. Really the best solution is to have a couple warm winters that produce outstanding alewife hatch’s. At the end of the day, I will always enjoy chasing trout and salmon regardless of what happens. Some years will be better then others, but my passion will be the same. Happy Holidays
  24. Sweet Caroline
    Likely our bread and butter fish, the lake trout, will take the biggest hit if salmon fishing declines. Cowbells will be flying by 9am. Even though you can C&R them better than steelhead, mortality will still be high in the Summer months. I’d imagine that any charter east of Oak Orchard looking to put clients on fish is going to save gas and opt for more of sure thing with lakers. Heck Charters do that even now if customers aren’t specific about what they want to catch. The upside to this is predation on alewives from lakers will be significantly reduced. Likely having as much or of an impact on increasing alewife abundance as the reduced salmon stocking. The impact will be long lasting as well since lake trout are long lived. With pen rearing in full effect and the natural reproduction we have nowadays, I’m not so sure the reduced stocking will have as much of an impact on salmon fishing as it did in the 90s. Sure, 20 + fish mornings will not be as common, and likely salmon fishing will be best in the Spring west and to the east in the Fall like it has in the past. I remember struggling to catch 2 or 3 salmon in the 90s. I don’t think it will get that bad...maybe. Other difference is, with the advent of the cowbell, I suspect the laker population will get hit heavily and fast. Difference between then and now is just about everybody knows how to fish lakers now. The use of cowbells as a laker fishing technique was not well known until the late 90s. Once it caught on, after a few years of heavy lake trout fishing along with the already reduced salmon stocking the alewife population bounced back and salmon stocking was increased. I really don’t think reduced limits or size restrictions will have much of an impact on trib fishing. As many other folks have mentioned I have a heck of a time getting lake caught steelhead to survive, especially once surface temps hit 68 plus. Since I prefer to catch steelhead in the streams and hardly ever keep fish in the lake, I truly would be in favor of reductions if I thought it would help. From a purely humane perspective I think it is a shame to release any fish that will not survive if somebody is willing to eat it. As others mentioned it is difficult to avoid catching steelhead while salmon fishing in the summer as they are found in many of the same water as salmon after June. Possibly April through June a creel reduction would make sense because steelhead somewhat can be targeted on surface and have a better chance of being released. I peaked in my trib steelhead fishing in the mid 90’s to about 2013, when my first son was born. I fished the tribs 2-4 times a week October-March. My logs all show that my best years were late 90s to about 2004-2005. I think the biggest impact of steelhead fishing in the tribs is the fishing pressure they get regardless of how many fish are in the system. For example, I remember taking days off from work when the the Genny blew out and then came back to that “perfect green” color. Easily 20-30 plus fish could be caught the first couple of days. By day 3, 10-15, and after that people struggled. Having more fish in the system wont stop the gluttony that happened the first few days and fishing will still be slow after that. It’s not that these fish die, it is they stop biting after being caught a couple times. The only solution would be to get folks to stop fishing after catching 5 or 10 fish, instead of continuing to catch 10 or 20 more. That is just not going to happen. Same scenarios at the Oak and Sandy. Thinking back, the reason why my fishing was best in the 90s through early 2000s was the use of center pins had not come in to full effect. I was a early adopter. Once everybody started using them, just like the effect cowbells had in the laker fishing, the pressure on these fish once in the tribs tripled. Again, this regulation has zero impact on me, but I thought I’d share an outside perspective.
  25. Sweet Caroline
    Don’t want to seem all doom and gloom but with the late Spring that we had and now early Winter it is highly likely the 2019 alewife hatch is going to be dismal as well. Was hoping for a warm Fall to allow a little more growth opportunity for them but that didn’t happen. A late Spring followed by a early Winter is worst case scenario for YOY alewife survival. Why even put a limit on Salmon in the lake? If people want to keep salmon, let them. Favorable environmental natural hatch or stocking conditions in any given year will outweigh any reduction in stocking anyway. Also, with alewife populations down, native bait populations will see a rebound. Maybe stock a few more Browns, steelhead, coho, that will feed on other sources of bait. Kings will die before they change their eating habits while other species will adapt. My two cents
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