Sk8man

Nice going Brian. Those landlocks are not only fun but tasty on the grill as well. I hope to get down there one day soon but have company all next week Save some fish for the rest of us will ya?

I've been using balloon rigs for years with sawbellies and shiners and smelt (when they were there ) on the Finger Lakes and at Cape Cod for Stripers with sand eels. It would definitely work on fairly calm days but as mentioned above Lake O is a great expanse and you'd need to find a pod of fish to use it effectively (as in jigging as well) and anchor up well away from them casting back in or drift slowly. The best use on the Finger lakes is in bay areas at the edge of drop offs anchoring on the inside edge and fishing the deep side and not fishing necessarily on or near bottom but suspended from the surface on a slip rig like in slip bobbers so that the bait even dead bait presents as something that looks as though it has been hit and missed by some other fish and is either drifting or if live-flailing under the surface. Fish look upward for bait as well as down and they see shadows and contrast with the sky etc. so they will come up for it. It was the same in night fishing with bait I have had them come right after the bait from the depths. I caught about as many fish using dead bait as live which probably may surprise some people....especially browns and lakers as they are basically "scavengers". My suspicion is that chinooks would readily grab live bait especially suspended rather than at the bottom too.

An example for me at least of going to lighter lines would be for Spring browns sometimes down to 8 lb. or 10lb. test from the 30 lb SeaFlee and for regular stuff on the Finger Lakes 12 lb instead of the 20 lb used on Lake O. I keep the SeaFlee 30 lb on most of my rigger rods all year long and just leader down but I keep a few with straight 12 lb mono and 10 lb fluoro leader just for the Fingers prior to flea onset too.

Spro power swivel #8 or 10 with original clinch knots wet and carefully cinched down tight (7 turns) except with braid where a uni or blood knot can be used but with most knots using braid you want to do more wraps of the line at the braid end as it is pretty slippery (e.g. 10 or 12 instead of 5 or 6)

Maybe try the Clyde River near Clyde NY near the lock (23?) at night if there is access now days or below the lock/falls (where the Canandaigua Outlet empties in near RT31) at Lyons in the Erie canal both places using cornmeal balls just slightly larger than a marble. To make the cornmeal balls just cook the cornmeal with some water until it is sticky and form into balls and put in the refrigerator briefly to slightly harden them before going fishing. They can be kept in a cooler wrapped in wax paper while fishing. I once caught a blue cat in the Clyde River that was over 8 inches between the eyes. We didn't have a scale only a 12 inch ruler with us so I don't know what it weighed...I couldn't lift it for long as a kid I know that Another possibility is at May's Point near Savannah NY and either on the Erie canal there or the Seneca River part below the causeway.

Ken is probably out buying Barbie some weighted steel line

Kev Glad to hear your dad is better and has the green light The Admiral and I were out in separate boats yesterday out of Hughes. He motored out to the 600's early while a buddy and I trolled out there from 120. Bob got into some in the 650 to 700 range (steelie and smaller chinooks) so we joined him and fished the 600 to 730 range the rest of the day but only ended up with a 6 or 7 lb steelie and a small chinnook and one real good fish that sunk our board pretty good and then got off on the 300 copper. Black spoons seemed best. and downriggers in the 50 ft range but again small sample of fish .... 680-690 was where we marked the most fish and the only place we caught anything. We never marked anything going out to that range or coming back in before quitting.. It is interesting to note though that for the entire afternoon we marked fish right on the bottom in the 600's. I couldn't believe them being that deep but it happened intermittently all afternoon as we trolled and his alarm went off and sure enough they were there. A fw suspended fish marked at 40 -70 ft. fleas were there in afternoon but mild. Strong currents in some places too. We trolled to the west of Ginna before quitting (5:30 AM to about 6 PM)

Yes

Rolmops made a great point. It is important to make sure the shaft is down deep enough for steering. One of the things I noticed when I recently bought a 9.8 Tohatsu is even with the same size shaft (20 inch in my case for my 18 1/2 ft Whaler is that this 4 stroke is much better steering than my previous 9.9 2 stroke. I believe it has more torque or something because I haven't used a steering connector even with the previous motor for a long time.....I just steer with my 135 outboard (25 inch shaft) and in strong wind I had to use my big motor with the 2 stroke but not with this new motor; it handles the wind just fine.

Trying Hughes tomorrow in my neighbors boat so I'm not giving up

I would agree Dave about temp not being everything but it is also hard to fish marks that are not there . I ran lines up high too but there was nothing whatsoever on the screen... bait or fish with the exception of one fish between 25 and 30 and I was running something right there without a hit. The salmon truly are often way out of temp and I'm not a fan of the whole "preferred temp" thing anyway but in the absence of any good data (marks) and nothing visible on the surface, gulls, scum lines, or temp breaks/thermal barriers (indicated by darker water meeting lighter) it is the next thing on the list to try .

Thanks and very true Jeff.....part of the addiction also another indicator oof how effective the Revolution spoons are too because that was the only one the big boy hit

Use a weight scale such as the cheap ones used to check your baggage weight (less than 10 dollars ) and set them at 3 1/2 to 4 lbs or so to start out with and then change it (if needed) accordingly when using heavier stuff like flashers and spinneys.

Thanks Mark and for mentioning about the current. The current was unreal and as Mark said going west and each time going with it the lines would go totally slack and then almost straight back going against it and GPS speed meant nothing

Yes Ed he was happy and that screamer gave him a pretty good idea despite not getting him in.

I was too beat to post last night once we came back from dinner. Rather disappointing results but we had fun. We got set up abut 5:30 AM and took temp readings down to 100 ft. It was 72 on the surface and 52 degrees at 25 ft. and at about 70 it went to 41 degrees so really messed up water temps and NE wind which changed back and forth with North and 3-4 ft waves so we decided to say screw the water temps lets look for fish and bait and try a diagonal north west from the channel and cover a large area of the water column with different setups looking for something to happen. We had 2 riggers with sliders, 2 wires wione with spinney and fly and one with Echip flasher and fly and a 300 copper with spoon and a top line on board with small dipsey and spoon and later a J-plug. We reached 178 and the 300 copper with a purple Revolution spoon started screaming line and I knew I had cranked down the drag a bit so I knew from the sound and the fact that it made three runs of over a hundred ft it was a good mature but he came unzipped after the third run. We continued trolling and at 203 ft. we had one on the wire rig with spinney and one of my home made green flies set at 250 and it turned out to be a small king about 3-4 lbs or so and we released him unharmed and he took off like a bullet. About 5 minuted later the downrigger set at 40 ft with a slider as well fired and fish on but about halfway in he got off....and no slider present....swivel opened up. We kept trolling out to 140 or so and nothing on screen so we went back in to the 170-200 range looking.....never saw another thing on the screen and no hits so we retraced our path backwards to the exact location of where we hooked up with the other fish and again nothing. The wind became due north with 5 footers so although temped to go real deep we didn't feel like getting beat up so we figured we'd instead try in shallower to see what happened and not fight the wind. bad call on my part....we trolled until 6 PM within the 60 ft to 160 and never saw bait during the whole day and only saw one fish at 30 ft and nothing in the way of action. Should have gone deep I think but there were a couple of boats in the AM that went out and came back in so I figured things weren't great out there either. Virtually no fleas on the wire or See Flee lines. No debris lines to fish. When we came back into the channel we saw a bunch of gulls in a circle suggesting there may have been some bait in there but we were done and didn't check it out. The flies were biting right through my buddys thick socks but as usual I wore long pants that covered the sock area so I didn't have any problems but they were all over the boat once the sun and heat were present. I forgot to mention. We also fished straight out from the channel before quitting in 90-150 range as I nearly always find lakers out there and thought we might try them but we spotted absolutely nothing there and usually they are hanging on the bottom at least.