rdebadts

My boat made its annual pilgrimage to olcott Friday night. We filled her with gas (ouch) and tied up safely at the dock at about 8:30 PM. I didn't have any solid intel, so I winged it Saturday; we started our morning in 80 feet of water on a northwest troll just east of Wilson. We had top lines on one board, short cores on the other board with ss spoons, and a mix of regular/mag spoons and meat on Riggers and Dipseys. we started the day with a coho on a 4 color core, and that rod went off again about 15 minutes later (probably another ho). Then I had a hit on the top line with a red spoon, and we missed that one too. We decided to move out looking for Kings because everyone was in the LOC, and we eventually found good screens in 180 to 220 on the east side of the bar. We picked away at two-year-old salmon, with the biggest one being maybe about 10 pounds. All told we had 14 or 15 bites, but it was a weird, un-patternable, frustrating bite overall. My long lines were getting short hit a lot. We simplified our spread to 8 rods with all the traffic, and I think every rod took a bite, but I don't think we had more than two or three bites on any individual rig. Tons of fish on the screen, lots of streakers- frustratingly few takes. Blue was the spook color of the day and our better fish came on riggers 90-115 and meat on dipseys 200+ out. i've been having my son and nephew fish a lot more, and they were out again Saturday! I had them catch all of the fish. Spring kings are wild, so our catch rate was... pretty low. That's OK with me though!!! The boys had a good time and we went in at about 11:15 when the east wind had become particularly annoying.

I had to work Saturday and the forecast for Sunday is as ideal, so we decided to have a kids fishing trip out of sodus. My brother and I took my son (9) nephew (10) and daughter (11) on an offshore fishing trip, after hearing of a great king bite all week. we ran out to 120 and set up with 3 rigger (40, 55, 85) a slide diver out 90 and a regular dipsey out 180. On one board we did top lines, and the other we did short cores. It was An all spoon program, to start. we had pretty steady action 180-240 on north south trolls. 3 of our first 4 fish were steelhead in the top 20 feet - as long as it had some red on it (mixed veggies worked too). Eventually kings took over the action, and our last 8 or 9 bites were salmon. We had an even mix of 1 and 2 year old salmon, with one 14 lb king that absolutely trashed my spread (had 4 lines wrapped up in it after almost passing my planer board, lol). Bites were spoons mostly 35-60 down (10 color, 7 color, 100 dipsey, rigger) and we had one deep rigger that took all of our major shots (we only converted one of the 4 though). Weather was gorgeous, kids had a blast- an ideal day Water temp is 47 on the surface. Starting to see a lot more bait, especially in that 150 to 200 range. The salmon were stuffed with a 2-3 inch alewife. sounded like a lot of the big fish moved east on us.

Gotta love this!!

Holy hell, what a brown!

Fished sodus Sunday am with my nephew and a good buddy's son. We started on the shoreline but were greeted with ice cold 41° water that was crystal clear. I quickly realized that the persistent south wind trashed the conditions and that was not going to work, so we slid out deeper looking for other options. We ended up finding a good bite on Lakers, coho, and even a steelhead fishing in about 120 feet of water. We ran a small grease trap on the corner rigger, and the rest was spoons from the surface down to about 50 feet (short cores, top lines, slide divers, etc). Small spoons in silver and red did the trick for the silvers . I saw some stuff a little deeper, but no takers with a bunch of different flasher/fly/meat combos on the port rigger/dipsey. Overall a decent bite in kinda crappy conditions- kids had fun (I was even let them rig a bit which is new for me) and we didn't get too beat up. After I got in, I found out that a bunch of guys smashed kings just outside of me!!! Crap. Oh well.

We took our maiden voyage out of sodus Saturday 4/8, and man, what a day it was! Basically, a perfect set up, with big wind a few days before we went out. We were greeted with plenty of brown and green water to fish, and we picked at fish all along the shoreline. I had my nephew Evan, and one of my fishing mentor (Bob's) grandson on the boat, and those boys had quite a good time! We had a few doubles, and even a triple! We ended up about 15 for 20, or something like that, by about 1030 in the morning. Most of our fish were mixed year class Browns, but we did catch three Cohos, and white fish as a kicker(my first ever)! Our biggest brown was about nine or 10 pounds. The fish were a little bit deeper than I would've expected; our best depth of water was about 15 to 20 feet. They certainly wanted natural colored stickbaits more than brightly colored stickbaits, despite the muddy water. I am very happy to see cookie cutters around again. Whatever they did with a stocking last year seems to have worked well.