hawkeye625

Try a longer lead off the ball. I had trouble with anything less than 20' with spinnys. Haven't had any issues since lengthening my leads.

Congrats...owesome fish.

We had a good spoon bite 2 weeks ago and had a king tangle a dipsy line and my 2 riggers...long story short, when my buddy cut the lines he didn't re-tie 20lb leader but went with strait 30lb. Didn't get a hit on the spoons for over 2 hours...til I reset a rigger and didn't see a leader. Put lines back out with leader and hit a double within 5 minutes. Took 8 more shots on the spoons in next 1.5 hours. I'm a believer in the lighter leader.

We run 20lb trilene xt leader and take over half our fish on spoons. Our setup is a 30lb big game main line and about 20 ft or so 20lb xt. Small quality swivel to spoon. GPS speed is usually 2.5 to 3.1, down speed 2.2 to 2.5 - works well for us using dreamweaver regular and super slim spoons. Try running your spoons just beside the boat and see what the action looks like at different speeds before dropping to target depth. That should give you a good idea if they are running right or not. Last weekend was primarily a fly bite for us but the week before was 70% spoon bite.

Braid is a little more forgiving and will get you a little more distance from the boat, but as others stated, when fleas come out its all about the wire. Wire will get you more depth and fleas are not an issue with it. I just started using it this year, but it's great not having to deal with the fleas. Heavy mono also works well down to say 40ft depths --- also gets you further from the boat in shallower water --- but much beyond that it has too much stretch for tripping the dipsy.

You should be in the right ball park. I have a probe and often watch both gps and down speed. Generally the probe runs .5 mph slower than gps so 2.2 down would be 2.7 gps. I usually get bites between 2.2 and 2.6 downspeed which would be 2.7 to 3.1 gps. However, currents can be wicked in some areas and the difference can be substantial. 2.5 down speed may be only .8 gps or 3.5 gps depending on current and direction. Some areas seem to have more current than others so that would all depend on where you fish and the wind direction, etc on the given day you are fishing. In my limited experience, if your lines seem too tight and dipsy drags are peelin' slow down a bit. If they seem too close to the boat, speed up a bit until you start getting hits. Pay very close attention to speed and direction and repeat it. For me, the probe was the best investment for lake O fishing. My bites almost tripled soon after hooking it up. Hope this helps. Jeff

If you plan on fishing 18 mile, the Oak or a similar size stream, I'd go with a 7 or 8 wt. If you like light action go with the 7wt. It will have just enough backbone for a large salmon and perfect (IMO) for steelhead. As others said, buy a rod with a warranty. I use a 9 ft 7wt for most great lakes applications, occasionally I'll use my 5wt for browns, but it's too light for kings when there's a croud (almost always at either stream). Go bigger if you plan on fishing bigger water. I would also suggest a large arbor reel. They pick line up alot faster and give you a smoother drag (IMO). Also get one with plenty of backing capacity. I've seen more than one king running down the oak pulling a full fly line with backing and no angler attached to the other end! I personally would spend more on the reel than the rod to get a better drag if you are king fishing. One word of advice if fishing the crouds, get in rythym with the other fishermen. Cast when the guy next to you casts and drift while he drifts. It sounds simple enough, but there's always a knucklehead in the crowd tangling everyone up by trying to cast over the guy next to him instead of waiting a couple seconds to cast in rhythym. Good luck. Jeff

I've been trying to hone my trolling skills by watching surface temps before setting lines but haven't really noticed any major breaks on the surface (maybe 2 tenths of a degree). How much of a break should I be looking for? 1 degree or more or just a few tenths of a degree? Earlier in the year it seemed like the breaks were more pronounced say a couple of degrees or more and it was pretty easy to find. I did try dropping the probe down when we hit the 1 to 2 tenths of a degree break but didn't see much difference in down temp. Is there a good web reference that shows surface breaks? As always, thanks in advance for the info. You guys are great. My goal for the year is a 30 pounder. Best to date is a 24 from the 4th of July. Not sure what we'd do with one that size but it sure would be fun! Jeff

Derek, We fish lake Ontario and Erie out of my 19.5 ft aluminum sea nymph. I personally would rather fish lake Ontario out of my boat. I've been up 5 times this year and only got chased off the lake 1 time due to weather. Be careful with the weather and don't go beyond your comfort zone and you'll do fine. Just be careful, once you fish lake O you're not gonna wanna fish anywhere else! One good king and you'll be hooked for life. Jeff

Nice job! The addiction has begun! If you get the urge to walleye fish again, just put a walmart bag back about 150' and reel it in. I do that once in a while to remember what its like.

Just bought 2 shakespeare ugly stick 1101 9' for this season and really like them. They're light, forgiving, and tough. Run about $50. Light enough for trout with enough backbone for kings. Plan on buying 2 more but in the 8'3" version (little easier to set) Bought them for multi purpose use...walleye...trout...salmon. Have worked very well so far on all species.

I bought a 1000' spool of 7 strand in May and haven't had any trouble with it. Bought another spool July 16 2011 and had 2 break offs in a matter of 5 minutes. Thought I may have gotten a bad spool, but after reading this thread I'm gonna buy malin. It may cost a little more up front, but I just lost $60.00 + in tackle in a matter of minutes.

Ditto what Tim said. Started using long leaders this season and increased hits by roughly 50%. We try to keep them rod length 9 to 10 ft and also use 50lb big game. We were running 30lb and had a couple break off when the fish hit. Bumped to 50lb and haven't had too much trouble. Just be careful with your drags if you choose to run 50lb. Your wire becomes the weakest link and you could loose your whole set up rather than just the fly and dodger. Netting fish is a little tougher in my 19ft boat, but the added hits are well worth it. We also use the double over hand knot to attach a quality medium ball bearing swivel to the wire. Only takes seconds to tie or re tie if need be. Do not skimp on your swivels these fish are beasts and will destroy cheap ones. Good luck, Jeff

Tim, I really don't know why we have so much trouble with the coated cable but we do. Maybe we aren't careful enough or get overly excited when fighting a king. Either way we have alot of problems with the cable and my unit will only pick up signal to about 45ft when the cable is exposed. (which has left us without signal roughly 50 to 60% of our fishing time last year ) Again the issues we had with the cable were our fault. BUT if we didn't need the coated cable we would have had a working probe the whole time we were fishing. Just trying to let Hal know the coated cable is an issue for us.

Hal, All I will add is the coated cable (in my opinion) is a pain. I've had the depth raider for 1.5 seasons and am on my 3rd cable. All of the issues with the cable have been our fault (crossed riggers once, left a fixed cheater on once while raising rigger), BUT if you fish much, you will more than likely have OOPS moments too and the coated cables run about $40 to replace. All units will do the job and if you search this site you'll see alot of guys love to argue their point on units, but if I could do over I'd go X4. PM me if you're interested in a used depth raider, mine could be for sale. Jeff

PM sent

still for sale?

Nice report. Good to hear you guys got into them.

Ryno, Try running all the same brand spoons in your spread. I had the same problem last year when running different brands of spoons at the same time. This year we started running 1 type (brand) of spoon together and it seems to be working for us. It doesn't matter what brand, just keep them all the same when putting out your spread (tip picked up last year from this site). Last week was mainly a spoon bite for us. We run spinnys on the dipsy's and spoons cheated on the riggers. Jeff

Fishing Report Your Name / Boat Name: ============== TRIP OVERVIEW ============== Date(s):7-16 7-17 Time on Water:6am - 2pm Weather/Temp:sunny/overcast Wind Speed/Direction: Waves: 1 ft or less Surface Temp: 73-75 Location:olcott LAT/LONG (GPS Cords): =============== FISHING RESULTS =============== Total Hits: 50+ Total Boated:33 Species Breakdown:kings, coho, steelhead, brown Hot Lure: Trolling Speed: 2.2-3.9 Down Speed: 2.2-2.9 Boat Depth: 70-250 Lure Depth: 25-45 ==================== SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS ==================== Took my finace back up for the weekend and we had a blast. Started off around 8:30 Friday evening out of Wilson for a quick evening trip and only hooked up with 3 skippys with temp in top 35 FOW. Started out of Olcott around 6AM Saturday morning in 75 FOW just east of the red barn on a NW troll. Dropped the probe rigger with a dreamweaver 42nd spoon to 42FOW and before I could clip on the cheater the rod fired..after a long battle we netted a 20 lb king. Not a bad start. Put the same set up back in the water with a green dolphin cheater and before I could set up the second rigger it fired again...22.8 lb king on the cheater. (keep in mind just the 2 of us on the boat and she isn't the best 1st mate or driver YET! only her 2nd trip on the boat and 1st solo with me)..Finally got the probe and second rigger down with a milotto dreamweaver and glo frog cheater and bam it fires on the milotto...8lb brown..during all the confusion I looked up to see that we're now being invaded by what looked like an erie perch pack of boats so we headed due west to avoid traffic. counted 57 boats at 1 point. Ended up with 5 fish to the boat and a couple dropped on 1st northwest troll to 200FOW and never got all 4 rods in the water til' 9:30. Tried to circle back to our marks but kept getting pushed west to keep away from traffic. We ended the morning with 18 legal fish and 1 skippy in the boat and many more dropped. Mostly kings and steelhead. We only kept the big king due to deep hooks. Spinnys were very quiet for us...but they might have been too deep 100-160 on wire dipsy. If any of you saw a 19 ft sea nymph going in circles it was us trying to fight fish and steer. Set up pretty close to the same spot on Sunday at around 6AM and had the same results. Ran the wire divers a little higher and got broken off twice...200+feet of wire/dipsy/spindoctor/fly withing 5 minutes of each other. Just spooled that rod with wire the night before so I'm not sure if I got a bad batch of wire or what. Ended Sunday with 9 boated and had a GIANT steely shake the hook after 5 or 6 huge leaps out of the water (had to be close to 20 lbs). We'll try and get him in the fall. We only kept 3 fish that bled when removing deep hooks and circled back for a 4th that floated for a while then dove when we got within netting range. All in all we had a great weekend on the lake and hope to get back up soon. If we got a little too close to any of you I am truely sorry. There were a couple of times she had to take the wheel and ended up closer than I like to be to other boats. Jeff

Great job Tim, what a slob! Congrats on the derby fish. We were in the same area with you and continued west trying to avoid all the traffic. We were in the 19 ft sea nymph going around in little circles every time we got a bite (fiance is just learning to drive the boat). Other than the fleas it was an awesome weekend out on the lake. Keep up the good work! Jeff

Thanks guys, I was very happy with the weeks results. I forgot to mention we only ran 4 rods all week, 2 dipsys (1 braid and 1 wire) and 2 rigger rods. Usually try to run more rods but end up with messes so figured we'd keep it simple (yet another tip from this site). Ended up with 6 or 7 triples and multiple doubles on 4 rods. Also got a bunch of doubles on cheated lines (mostly shakers). We did have a coho on and 2 or 3 others chased the cheater to the surface, that was pretty cool. Also the fish in the fuzzy picture is a brown. All the browns came at or very near 100 FOW. Jeff

Fishing Report Your Name / Boat Name: playing hookey ============== TRIP OVERVIEW ============== Date(s):7-2 - 7-10 Time on Water:6am - 8pm Weather/Temp:varied Wind Speed/Direction:varied Waves: varied Surface Temp: 68-70 Location:olcott LAT/LONG (GPS Cords): =============== FISHING RESULTS =============== Total Hits: too many to count Total Boated:100+ Species Breakdown:browns, lakers, atlantics, steelhead, coho, kings Hot Lure: dreamweaver spook/42nd Trolling Speed: 2.4-3.5 Down Speed: 2.1-2.6 Boat Depth: 85-250 Lure Depth: 30-75 ==================== SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS ==================== Took the week off to do a little derby fishing with my Fiance. Her 1st trip to lake Ontario. Needless to say she is hooked! Started off Saturday and most of the week between red barn and Wilson in 85 FOW with riggers down 57 and 69 dipsys with spinnys out 190 to 200. Took fish on all sets with the deep rigger doing the best 42nd cheated with a green dolphin. After a 12.5lb, and 17lb king she took a little break then grabbed the rod for a couple steelies and coho. We ended up boating and average of 20+ legal fish/day and countless shakers. With the best day being Tuesday boating 33 and all species but an atlantic. Picked up and released a couple of atlantics on wednesday 12lb and 15 lb. The Northeast wind pushed colder water in Thursday/Friday and pushed most fish high in the water. Ran riggers 30-45 FOW for best results. Bigger fish came a little deeper. My brother and a buddy came up later in the week and our best fish was a 24lb king that took a green spinny with a green fly. We had at least 1 screamer get the best of us each day. 3 pulled split rings, 2 broke off, the rest charged the boat and shook off. (new rule on my boat DONT TOUCH MY DRAGS!!!) Our best fish were a 12.5lb brown, 15 lb atlantic, 12.3 lb steelhead, 24lb king, 8lb coho and maybe a 7lb laker. An excellent mix of fish for us. Released all but a few for the freezer that took hooks too deep, two browns, 11.6 and 12.5 my buddy wanted to mount and the steely for the derby. Also met Tim from LOU at the cleaning station. Nice to meet you Tim. I can't thank you guys enough for all the information gathered from this site. LOU is the best source of information a troller could ask for. Hopefully I can contribute to the cause in the future. Jeff

Thanks for the quick responses. I thought about another swivel, but it didn't make sense to me to attach a swivel to a swivel, so we just ran the spinnys on dipsys. I'll give it a try and will only run welded split ring swivels. We found out the hard way on cheap swivels. Had 3 big guys pull split rings last week. By the way if any of you guys catch the grand prize derby fish out of Olcott with jewelry attached I may be able to identify it. Jeff

We had major issues with fleas sticking to our power pro and found if you slide a bunch of them down the line forming a ball, make a loop with your line around the flea ball and pull both ends, the loop will cut right through them. It's much easier than trying to pick them off but only works if there's nothing big pullin' on the other end of your line. Hope this helps. Jeff