carpedium

I had planned to fish the tourney up until the week of 7/17 when a few guys I had planned to fish it with dropped out. Early last week I was in contact with ScottB, and he put me in contact with a guy who's team had dropped out as well - Dan. Dan and I hatched out a plan to be on the water early, and we would head northwest out of the harbor and see what we could raise around the 180 mark. Getting set-up at first was the most difficult part, even though I used my rods for my rigs, I still had to get used to his boat. Using some of his equipment did open my eyes to some of the finer things out there... like roemer releases... Copper down the chute... and I really like the Okuma reels as well. We started off with two riggers and two wire dipseys - one of them mine pulling the Familiar Bite Green Label whole Alewife in a Blue Glow bait head. The other wire had a silver s/d with a green/orange A-Tom-Mick Fly. We trolled to the pumphouse then made a loop around back toward the harbor. About 3 minuets after we turned, we noticed slack in one of the rigger lines. Dan goes over to grab the rod, and immediately a large steelhead is 4 feet out of the air 10 feet off the back of the boat! This would have been the biggest steelie I had seen first hand, i'm not going to venture a guess on weight (20lbs) or length (36") (haha) but it would have been interesting to see how much it shrunk if we were able to get it on the boat. It ended up screaming the reel like a freight train for a solid 15 seconds before it simply "let go". This was off the 60' rigger. Next up was a small king that came in on a green/red spoon of Dan's. This fish INHALED the spoon, and would have been a floater- so we boxed it. Then came a really hard and fast rip on the Familiar Bite Bait 320 off the dipsey at a 1.5 setting. This thing hit like a leer jet and never stopped until bam it simply came unbuttoned. I've never had that happen... just let go in the middle of a run.. no slack in the line, nothing. just gone. We went on to take 4 steelies in a row off of our 60' rigger, around 20-26 inches. two went back and two went in the box. Back in front of Sandy, we decided to troll North out to some deeper water. We were marking fish everywhere out there, but only hooked up with one. This one came on (you guessed it) the 60' rigger. Ended up being a high teens king that was our largest in the box. The 60' rigger had a glow NBK crinkle that took almost all of our fish: Later we had another hit on the wire, but that ended up getting tangled in dan's copper that was down the chute. Luckily I think he only lost about 10' or 20' of it. We ended up being in the bottom 5 but it was a whole lot of fun. Plus there was a gift cert for more copper for Dan. I'm really looking forward to next year. Thanks again Scott for hooking us up, he's great guy and it was a really enjoyable time. For fishing a tourney with someone whom you have never met and only talked to once on the phone I think we did pretty well. It was great meeting a lot of you - hope to see you on the water. Thanks to everyone that put this on! Matt

Great report Matt Its funny because the bite all day Sat for us was on spoons. We got one good scream (that later let go) from the Familiar Bite around 9:30 and that was it! Congrats on 5th!

welcome!

I'm pretty excited for a great tourney and to meet ya'll in person... Good luck everyone

wow.... my 70hp outboard uses about 5 gallons a day trolling. I'd think that there are many factors that affect your trolling speed, not so much the fact that it is a v-8 or v-6. The prop for example

Did this start after hearing a strange crunch? How is your prop?

ohhhhh that surge. thanks kgonefishin

Mark, What is surge?

My understanding is that the SD/fly combo is not supposed to be really stealthy rig.

I take a piece of round foam insulation about 12" long to wrap stuff like that up on. Just stick the swivel end in the foam or the hook in the foam and wrap.

thanks

welcome!

do you reckon that got you down about 30 feet?

Great Job guys!

Awesome Tim... Had to be a thrill getting a strike while letting the dipsy out! This is getting my blood boiling to get out. After a week fishing for boots lake george it will be nice to get out on the open water again

It sounds like you had a kink. How do you connect your swivel to the wire? I use a Wire knot and I have been fine so far.

Seeing them sleeping in the sandy creek public launch overflow lot at 5am is what urks me about them. They could have been considerate and glassed at 10x the distance without getting in his face.

My woman only aspires to be as good of a master baiter as yours.

wow... That is a fish of a lifetime right there

Currently regretting the decision to plan camping the same week/weekends as the LOC AND two Pro-Ams. I could have even busted out my banana hammock sounds like.

Awesome! Morning or afternooon? [ Post made via Android ]

My balls are black without glitter. One ball was orange, and it never seemed to produce as much as the black one, so I painted it.

nice...

Heading up on Friday.... pretty excited

A little late on this report, but it was a busy weekend! Ended up going out from 5-11 on Saturday. The North wind got rather strong mid-morning but then settled down quite nicely. We started out going straight out to 400 FOW trolled back in to around 200 and then headed west. We marked fish consistently the whole way between 90-120. My first time trying the Familiar Bite whole alewives, we set them up on the dipseys. Pretty slick with the baitheads and included plastic toothpicks! We did mainly kings with one fat steelhead slamming a DWB while in the prop wash while retrieving our port down rigger rod. The thing seemed like it was 6 feet out of the air! Our hot setups were the whole alewives and the NBK spoon as a free slider. We had consistent action, but it sounded like it was slim pickings for some on the radio. I tried sharing what was working for us - but no response. It later warmed up for their program when we were heading in. Kept the bleeding steelhead and an exhausted king, but left the camera in my friends car.. will post later!