Sk8man

The fleas and weeds sure take a bit of the fun out of things these days...just glad I'm not a fish and have to co exist being choked with fleas, the quagga's and Zebras messing things up along with all the other stuff (e.g jet skiers buzzing overhead, cigar boats vibrating the entire lake etc.). We dealt with a lot of that same stuff on Seneca Sunday as well. I think this is becoming a banner year for the fleas and it will be awhile before the water temps go down enough to decrease them. Maybe there is something to be said for all the boats stradling the north end and drinking beer and jumping in the water at this time of the season.

Considering the potential torque of downriggers you should probably always have a supportive backing underneath. If it were me I'd have a plate of 1/4 inch aluminum under neath extending past the points of connection aways to disperse the torque. Some guys use wood but I think metal is a sturdier alternative. I've related it before but I knew of a guy fishing a derby on Seneca whose ball hung up on bottom and it ripped a section right out of his gunwale (glass boat) and the downrigger had to be recovered by a diver.

Nice work on the Friday fishing Dave. Thx for the report and nice pics. Isn't it amazing what one day difference makes out there?

Great report and very nice rainbow Alex...they sure are a lot of fun....I'll bet those newbies eyes lit up when they saw that one come in the boat WTG!

Don't worry Ed he can hold his own real good (claims he needs both hands too)

The weeds and fleas were annoying but the ball busting was great

Admiral Byrd (Bob) and I took awhile to check the weather this AM before deciding to give Seneca a try in his newly "reconditioned" Penn Yan boat. We launched from the Chamber a little before 8 or so and fished until 1 PM. A bunch of fish were marked at the 75 ft or so range yesterday by Bob and we had 48 degrees down about 90 ft today with low 70's on the surface so we trolled south with a combination of things(one 5 leader rig, a dipsey with spoon a downrigger and spoon a flasher/fly combo, a leadcore and the weed patches started almost immediately. Shortly after we started the rig rod started thumping and taking out line and it turned out to be a 6-7 lb chubby laker on the 4th spoon down (nail polish special Sutton 44) tossed back and kept trolling south then turned back north just north of Reeders and when the bottom came up a little quicker than expected we nailed a small laker on the dipsey /spoon rod set at about 250. We trolled north against the now 10-15 mph west wind and nothing happening ( thank God for his autopilot though) but when we pulled in the lines in front of Roy's we had another laker on the rig down on the last leader (another nail polished Sutton 22). We were trying to avoid "lakerville" by running up high but no rainbows or landlocks and browns were in the cards for us today. It was mostly a test of Bob's "improvements" to the boat and it all worked great. The grass pockets were pretty annoying especially one huge one that temporarily disabled the trolling motor it was so thick and wrapped up the prop and the fleas were pretty bad too encrusting just about everything we had out and it was clearly a two man operation bringing in the lines. The pics were the highlights of our trip