I was wondering if anyone can shed any light (confirm or deny) a rumor going around that some of the East end captains are looking to meet with the DEC to discuss the shrinking size of King salmon with consideration for a moratorium on stocking for two years?
Hit the water today at the bight early time of noon. For some reason my spidey senses said go brown fishing young man….I never go brown fishing in the summer. I don’t know why I decided to Brown fish but glad we did. If you have never seen a pre-spawn staging brown blitz, you are missing out on one of the wonders of nature. We set down in 42’ and it was game on. Rods going in, rods going off. Non-stop action for three hours. Browns were stacked from top to bottom. Fish were rolling and boiling on the surface. 76 degree water. And then it ended. Hooks still there but the blitz just ended. We slid off the drop and spent the next two hours on two and three year old kings. Great day. Spoon bite. Michigan Stinger stingray UV glow alewife and dreamweaver mag spoons. Rigger and slide diver bite.
These are 90% three year olds being caught IMO. They have developing gonads. With that being said, single digit percentage of kings making it to four years old off a huge class of fish means there should be historically big numbers of four year olds based on pure volume for next year
I have been having reoccurring problems with my Cannons. Blown fuses and motherboards. I run a Big Jon on deep center rigger. It goes up and down. Never a problem. My two corner riggers are cannons. They last a year before boards need replacing. Big Jon and Cannons are wired exactly the same with an inline fuse to POS + post direct to a dedicated battery that only the riggers are hooked up to. Connections to primary battery and perko battery switch. Rigger wires are sized up two sizes so it should not be a resistance problem. See picture of the melted fuse below. It has been suggested I have a bad ground. Connections look perfect with sealed terminations. Getting ready to junk them. Any suggestions?
Grind bite today with those same 12-16 lb three year olds that dominate the catch. We did see a couple bait pods and basically made circles where the bait was all day. Meat rigs were the ticket. Two spoon fish and two plug fish, the rest were taken on meat. 124’-180’
First day back on Lake Ontario since the spring LOC (boat repairs). Hit the water at 8:45 and appeared to have missed the morning bite or fishing was slow as the lake was empty of boats after 1:00. We trolled north out to 420’ and back and never really saw anything to turn on. Zero bait, skinny fish and what appeared to be a SE down current (usually NE). Fish were scattered. Lots of steelhead everywhere we went. Most of the kings of any size were in the 135’-180’ range. Mag dipsys with meat back 240’-300’. Riggers 68’-82’ with spoons. One plug fish on slide diver. One junk line fish. I surmise the wind direction last night played a role but it seemed like the lake was settling when we quit at 4:30. Fish came in flurries. 4 or 5 fish in quick succession then nothing for an hour. Back at it in the morning
Guesses on the average fish size for the winning box? Knowing there will be calm seas, some will go for the home run jig bite. My guess is a 7 lb average