Gill-T

Mid September your best bet for numbers would be Oswego or Salmon river and the Charters that service those areas. Maybe late in the game to find an unbooked Captain but there are always cancelations.

30 lb main line mono for flashers. 30 lb mono line leadered down to 15lb mono in spring or 20lb mono the rest of the year. When running flashers deep on the riggers I add a barrel swivel 5' ahead of the flasher to reduce line twists further......this also allows you to add a spoon cheater above and acts like a stop when the cheater slides down the line on a release reducing tangles.

Use your GPS and trace your course to mark the drop. Start at the Canadian border and turn east when you hit 90' of depth (don't put rods out to distract you). You are at the rim of the drop off. Troll E/NE towards the red can buoy while maintaining a constant reading of around 90'. The red can denotes the location where the the Niagara Bar comes to a point. Troll past/around the red can buoy for another 3-5 miles and then save the trail on your GPS when finished. The drop off trail should now appear on your graph every time you turn it on and will help you identify the feature and reduce the stress of possibly loosing your gear if you were to run up on the structure. Do the same thing to the East rim of the trench hole at the mouth near the fort. Start even with the fort and trace the East edge of the hole at the 30' level. As you get close to the green can buoy start to head more on a NW/W heading and end at the Canadian border.

Yes there are browns ON the bar. The challenge of the bar is there is it is such a large area to cover. Trolling shoreline contours you can identify a depth where fish are and just stitch a trolling line parallel to the shore to stay in the hot zone. Browns can be anywhere on the bar from 30' out to the drop at 90'. The nice thing about your home Niagara water is that if you want kings, there are ALWAYS kings on the drop. At certain times of year the area may be swarming with little shaker kings but there are always fish on that piece of structure. Larger Kings make early evening movements from deeper water to the drop-off to feed each night. Out past 250' you will get into a steelhead bite. Living in Lewiston you are close to one of the greatest stretch of water in the world.....the Niagara Bar. My suggestions is to save on gas money and spend the majority of time learning your home water.

There are browns all along the south shore. From Lewiston, put in at Wilson and troll towards the Niagara using the methods discussed above. Also, NOBODY targets browns on top of the bar before the drop off. There is warm Niagara water there with bait and no boats!

Right, the fish holder Nick has in his picture is not a gaff.

Hand gaffs are not legal in NY freshwater.

Glad you made it out Rod. Always something to fix on an older boat. Just got my new prop and skeg repaired because of running up on Sturgeon Pt. on Lake Erie..... . Kings are still in their winter pattern which is frustrating as their metabolism in that cold water means they don't have to feed as much. I have wasted so much time in my life chasing those deep cold water kings. Frustrating.

Nothing magical about them. There is some thought that because salmon develop changes in their eyes to see UV when nearing their spawning cycle (perhaps to differentiate between species in spawning rivers/spawning colors) that one might conclude that using UV infused baits might work better in the late summer into fall. I think the UV lure tape just adds a cool color/flash to the bait......nothing more.

I used to run a Deep-Six diver down the middle. No problems with tangles unless a rigger shot got into them. The deep six will run in front of dipsys with a steeper dive curve. The problem I found was it would kill the spread. I think the center line was "lining" the fish coming down the middle to look at the riggers? I don't run them anymore.

I just tie an Improved Cinch to a swivel. Good choice on line.....it will never go bad.

As all predatory fish, Walleye will feed where the food is. Perch, gobies, smelt, Jonny Darters, Sculpin, Mudpuppies are plastered to the bottom. Always good to have at least one line down there.

Everything is behind from rough winter. Bass opener was SLOW because the fish are still spawning. The fish we kept still had eggs.