Pete Collin

Hello All, Imagine if you could talk to yourself as a kid. Ask your child-self how you would describe a day where you caught a 10 pound fish. For most of us, the response would be something like "THE BEST DAY EVER!!!" I always think of that when things are slow on Lake Ontario. My motto is, you are always one 10 pound fish away from having a great day. After a week of unsettled weather, and a big full moon last night, I wondered how good the laker jigging would be today. Wanting to try something new, I spent the night at Ron Bierstine's "garage lodge" so I wouldn't have to get up so early to drive an hour and a half to thelaunch. It was nice hanging out with Ron, getting caught up. But the best laid plans - I woke up at 3:45 AM anyway because I was so excited to fish. There were plenty of marks down there - much deeper than last week, but following a consistent contour. And the wind and waves were great for a small boat. The marks weren't moving towards my jig very often. All I could do was stick it out and hope things changed. First bite came at 8:30. Nice heavy head-shaker and netted up a thirty inch laker. A ten pounder showed up to make my day suddenly awesome. An hour later, a second heavy fish tapped. At the hookset, I knew I would be busy for a while. Sometimes you feel their weight right when you tighten up. That one became a 32 incher after a long heave and crank. Plenty of marks on the graph for the rest of the morning, but no more strikes. But the day had one last highlight. The lake turned totally flat calm. I was able to see my Hopkins spoon coming up from down deep. On one drop, I "saw some color" while reeling up. "Why am I seeing that? I'm not playing a fish!" Well a roly-poly fish that I think was a salmon followed it right up to boatside! I tried to jiggle the spoon to seal the deal, but he zipped around it and then dove. Man! Turns out there was a mussel on the treble hook that, had it not been there, might have made all the difference. Wonder how many times that has happened when the surface chop kept me from noticing? Back at the launch, I met a young guy named Brian that had some luck out deep. He is a member of this message board, and we had a nice chat after pulling our boats out, comparing notes. It's been so nice being able to make some trips out, feeling like I am getting back into the swing of things! Pete Collin www.pcforestry.com

Always fun meeting folks from the board!

Well, Whaler, on this very forum I have read guys pledging to purposely cut the gills of any laker they catch because they believe that this native, naturally reproducing species outcompetes their alien, hatchery raised chinooks. So, yeah, forgive me for feeling protective towards them.

I accidentally caught a landlocked salmon once. In the video, you can see a blip up high. I was seeing those all day and figure they were salmon or steelhead. They'd look at my jig but not hit. I think those guys on Lake Michigan jig with spoons. Will have to try that.

Filming yourself fishing is tough in a power boat - can't imagine having to worry about the camera while kick-paddling a kayak!

I get asked that all the time. But I don't think that matters. I get the feeling that lakers are very plentiful in LO. I have caught them everywhere from the Niagara Bar to Irondequoit. And they aren't always in the same places. In general, when the thermocline sets up, go looking in about 100 FOW. They might be in 80 or 120, look around until you find them. I often troll as part of the search. Target fish on the shallower side because it's easier to get those.

I did a separate video where I describe all that. If you know how to search my old posts or my YouTube channel, you will find them.

Hello All, Filming a fishing video by yourself is not easy. But I finally managed to get a movie of myself catching a nice big one!

Thanks everybody for your advice.

More like six years. I haven't been out much the last couple.

Hello All, Back in 2010 I bought a new Coleman 5 hp outboard to be used as a trolling motor. "A thousand bucks! Free shipping! What a bargain!" Well here I am 8 years later and I am told it is toast. It gets 75 pounds of compression, I am told it should be 130 or something like that. Silver Lake Marine refused to even look at it, not a good sign. So I am wondering if you gearheads can tell me - what makes a motor not worth doing a cylinder bore/piston ring job on? Is it that the engine block is so light that it will inevitably warp again? One thing makes me wonder about this defect - when I first bought the motor, it didn't seem to have good flow of cooling water at slow speeds. It would make sneezing sounds out of the water exhaust- telling me taht it was reaching boiling point. So I called the company and they sent me a new water pump impeller. Thing is, the new impeller was shaped differently than the original one. Which tells me that they necessarily changed the design, or they put the wrong one in the first time around. Not a good sign. Either way I wondered if the cooling water running hot that first season contributed to my cylinder blowing so quickly. So if I did rebore the cylinder, at least the water pump is working correctly now. Would I get twice as much life out of it this time? My last kicker was a 1975 Johnson 6 hp Seahorse that I wish I had rebored. That was a nice little motor. Pete

If you are having trouble getting down, try big 2 oz hopkins-style spoons. They'll get you down there. 1 oz is too light most of the time. I run 1 1/2 oz roundheads.

A couple of years ago I did a tutorial on lake trout jigging. It was filmed on Lake Ontario but the technique is the same. The only difference is that a fast crank works on the finger lakes, rarely does on LO.

theyre deadly behind a spin doctor.