rdebadts

We fished the Niagara pro am, which is as always a fun tourney. Our pre-fishing day, things were a bit of a mess. First of all it was one of the foggiest, dreariest days I've ever seen. Visibility was about a 10th of a mile most of the day. Secondly I had a sick kid so I was off the water by 930. However, we did find that there was a decent coho bite anywhere from 120 to 200 feet of water. We got that program dialed in, but couldn't find a king to save our lives. We were mostly getting fish on Riggers 30 and up, as well as top lines, and short lead cores Friday, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We landed right on the fish that we were catching on Thursday, and very quickly had a pile of very nice cohos in the boat. We started in about 170 feet of water, but by the end of the day we were catching fish out in about 320. Fish were stretched from in front of all cut all the way to about a mile west of Wilson. Our bigger fish, including some nice steelhead, were out closer to 300. Not a single king bite again, but our average on the coho was about 8.5 pounds, and that put us in sixth place. We ended up 15 for 20, or somewhere close to that. By contrast, Saturday was miserable. It wasn't unfishable from a wave standpoint, the 2 to 4 footers weren't exactly exactly comfortable, it was just annoying that the wind made direction and speed a huge hassle. We decided to stay on the shallower side of our marks from Friday, and the Coho were right where we left them. Unfortunately our catch rate was much lower, and I think we started the day like five for 12 or something stupid. The Coho's were of the smaller size class and our average fish was only about 5 to 6 pounds. We did find one little spot in 220 and had three quick bites on kings down 80, but we didn't convert any of them. One of them was quite a big fish. I left stuff down in deep water literally all three days, and Saturday was the only time I had any action down there. It was very frustrating. Short cores of various lengths were good, but by far our best rig was a 55 and 70 Dipsy with a Coho rig. We didn't really have the weight to compete, but we ended up with another good catch, 10 for 22 (or something like that... it was windy and I was getting too annoyed to log them all). As usual, a great place to fish and a fun tournament. We will be back again next year. Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

I'll second the gambler rigs- both cowbells and death traps Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

Brown Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

Nothing better than a gambler rig! Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

Definitely has been poor for just about everyone! Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

Who you guys going with? The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

You could l literally write a book about water temps, currents, and fish behavior as it pertains to those factors. From June on, the basic idea is this- warm water on top and progressively colder as you go deeper. Current is west to East, and prevailing wind is also from the west. West wind, and north or south wind Things get tricky in a few scenarios: 1. East wind. Wind fights the current, and very easily causes an inversion (flip) where cold water comes rushing into shallow water. The sudden change of temps from the 70s to 38-42 is common. It stuns the fish and they scatter. Every now and then a surface bite works nearshore, but usually you need to search more for stable water 2. STRONG south or north wind can cause sudden upwelling if cold water. It causes the same scenario as 1. I will say it usually takes sustained winds of 15+ for hours to do this. 3. strong west winds. This usually means warm water piles up on the east end. Temps will be deeper and deeper, as you described sometimes 140+. If you can find any pockets of cold water, beat them to death. Otherwise, move out deeper where there is usually colder water. Hope that helps. The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

This weekend pretty slow- 1.8-2. Usually it's like 1.9-2.4 The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Lol. I betcha there were some 7s mixed in Friday when we packed up The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

First, sorry about the lack of posts this year... ya see, you have to be on the water to report, and I just plain haven't. Covid has conspired against me on many levels. Anywho- What a weekend at sodus. I have been blessed for several years with a consistent group of 4-6 guys that fish EVERY tourney with us. They're all great- they can drive, rig, net; and do it all without having to be asked. It's a well oiled machine. However, due to work and Covid, I was down to just me and one of my regulars. Even the boat co-owner (my brother) was absent due to quarantine. So, we scrambled and my buddy Darrel and 7 year old nephew joined Saturday and Sunday, and another buddy (no experience) joined Sunday. It's been an exceedingly strange year. I've been out on my boat just 6 times this year (3 of those this weekend), which is just absurd. Needless to say, I've been looking forward to this tourney. Friday we were greeted with 2-3 waves that quickly built to 4-6+. We set down in 90 and immediately got into various sizes of kings, with majors mixed in. We missed a few good ones, but the bite on mag black spoons off riggers was great. The weather was far too rough for my 7 year old nephew, so we called it at 8:30. We had 9 king bites in 2.5 hours so I felt relatively comfortable about Saturday. Big blows mix things up, and that's fine with me! On Saturday, we went out to about 120, our best area from Friday. Things started well enough with 3 kings in the box by about 8, with a few misses (they didn't bother me much at the time). Then, we rotted. I worked further East, then deeper (almost to 300), then back in to 140. Just as we were gonna pop to run in for browns, we boxed an upper teen king. So we decided to stay in 130 and proceeded to miss 3 screamers in the last hour. That hurt. We weighed in 4 fish and had 100 pts. Ouch. The bite was entirely uv spoons on riggers. I tried like 30 different meat rigs and flies on dipseys, and they didn't move all day. Honestly, we had the bites we needed, it just didn't all come together. Such is life. Sunday, we opted to run 4 miles west (the pack went East) and still work those mature Kings 130-180. We worked a program heavy on spoons, mostly a white nk 28, mag dw frog and stinger uv gators. The screen looked great all day from 70-110 down. We started with a few low teen kings in 130-140, then a few upper teen kings in the same water by about 8 am...then we found the mother load of big kings in about 180. We would go in to box 5 more kings in about 1.5 hours, all around 19-22 lbs, all on a deep spoon program. We had a nice little patch of water about 100 yds wide that was on fire. The guys were flawless on the rods and we caught all of our bites. We spent 2 hours at the end of the day trying for our kicker laker, to no avail. Even so, our Sunday score was 179 for 6 fish! It was enough to catapault us into 5th (out of 28) which I found pretty satisfying given the circumstances. We cashed a check and had a lot of fun. My nephew was giddy about the outcome, which is maybe the best part! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

The way to go, if it's just you, is join an open boat trip- pretty much all the boats offer that. You Can do a day trip for like 400 a man, and overnight 30 hr trip for like 750 a man. Most overnight boats, if you book the whole thing, are like 4 grand at least so you'd want to do with 6 guys to split the cost The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

I've wanted to do a open ocean tuna charter for as long as I can remember, and it finally happened. We did a canyon trip out of jersey June 26. We caught yellowfin and bluefin, and ALOT of them! We got quite the nature show as well. It was a dream come true, and to top it off I did the trip with my dad and brothers. Here is the video! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Well done, sir! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Well done, sir! The Fishin’ Physician Assistant

Holy crap. A 33 lb king in May?!? Wow The Fishin’ Physician Assistant