Big Water

Thanks Capt Vince. Your willingness to help and responses are always appreciated.

This site is GREAT. It's what's meant by "standing on the shoulders of giants". Like you, Erie was my mainstay until I got over the Out of State license phobia this year. I could kick myself for not doing it sooner. When I explained to my fishing buddy how to rig a Blacks release and he mistakenly wrapped it several times around the release and a fish busted 30 lb Power Pro, I knew I wasn't in Erie any more.

Having only one year under my belt, I have a lot of learning to do about set ups and spreads. I do know that while listening to the marine band radio this past year, I was always hearing boats talking about hitting them on 300 copper. Sometimes charters were saying it was the only rig taking hits, which is why I thought it belonged in the default set up. Now that I have a temp probe, I should be able to tell if 300 copper will get me to the desired depth. Thanks guys!!

Monkey Puke, Like you, I just got a depth/temp probe and after a lot of study went with the Fish Hawk X4. I see you're from Kersey and one of my fishing buddies is from nearby St Marys, so I often pick him up on the way to Olcott. Maybe we can tie up and compare notes sometime in 2011.

After cutting my teeth on Ontario this past year and getting necessary rod/line combos, I've got a set up question. Most of the time it's just me and one other person in my boat. I now have the following set ups 2-Wire rods, 2-copper rods (300'), 2-braid rods and 2-leadcore rods (8 and 10 color). Since I can only run four rods, my thoughts for a default (exploratory) set up are to run the 2 wire rods (1 w/flasher/fly and the other with spoon), 1 deep rigger w/ flasher/fly and one copper with spoon till one shows it's outperforming the others. When running just four rods, what would be your recommended combinations of lines and flasher/fly vs. spoons? Thanks, Doug

My wife got me a Fish Hawk X4. Can't wait until the water's not 33 degrees from the top to the bottom. Last year was my first at Ontario and I've learned a lot from you guys. Thanks and Happy Holidays!!!

Anyone ever tried running small dipseys or slide divers on a 3 setting off of the riggers? It seems you'd get a better spread horizontally. I'd then run big divers on wire on a 3 setting to get even further out to get a good spread and cover more water. Lastly I'd add a copper down the chute. Is this going to create any problems that you know of? Thanks!

PB, Boy I wish I had joined you. My plan was to fish there today, but after coming home from Raystown yesterday and having to drive 10mph for the last 5 miles on icy roads, I second guessed myself. I'm not accustomed to this winter boating thing yet, If someone hadn't salted the launch at Raystown, I'd probably be sitting there waiting for spring. When you're ready for another trip, and the roads aren't to bad, give me a call.

11/13 A buddy and I fished Seneca 11/13 and made the mistake of heading out of Lodi Point with a south wind. The waves were 2-3 foot. Did manage one 15" LL there and packed it in and headed for Watkins Glen. Started out on the east side and and trolled about 2 miles past Hector Falls. Managed an 18" LL on a "special" setup (thanks Polar Bear) and then headed over to the west shore. Caught one more small LL near the salt plant and had a couple of knock offs there. Would have liked to stay, because I was marking a lot of big fish, but it was getting dark. 11/14 Headed to Keuka after reading a report last week about "overpopulated" lakers there. First time there and I didn't realize that to get from the Penn Yan launch to the lake you need to traverse a canal for 1/4 mile or so. I don't know if the water was unusually low, but a lot of it was no more than 2' deep. After getting into deeper waters, I set up riggers from 65' to 90' down. Trolled a couple of miles down the west side and saw there are more points on the east, so I crossed the lake and trolled towards the Y. Ended 4 for 8 with all small lakers. Surprisingly, I did better running lines from 30-60' in north end skinny water than I was doing in deep water. Seems like I should have stayed in the north end all day.

PM sent

Glad to hear they're hitting. I'll be there Sat and Sun to see what I can drag up. How deep you hitting them? Doug

Anyone have an update on near-shore BT and Steelhead trolling? I'd really like to give this a shot and don't know if now is too early. Any particular creeks better than others? I usually head to Olcott. Thanks Doug

Did a one day trip today and the waves weren't too bad. Got pretty calm in the late morning. That's the good part. I only landed two Lakers today. One was a nice 30+" fish that went somewhere aroung 10 lbs. (I'll post a picture when I remember how that's done). The second was a 20" fish that I must have dragged aroung the lake for an hour. My wife kept saying the downrigger rod was bouncing, but everytime I looked back it was still and I thought it was probably weeds. I keep the releases tight for a good hook set. Had two knock-offs with no one home. Both fish were caught 85' down over 100-115 FOW on green S/D with Pole Dancer flies. I'm going to need to go to F/F line, because the fleas were still bad enough to clog my rod tip. Looking forward to the winter fishing!!

Still heading out tomorrow. Fished 3-4 footers all summer at Ontario. How much worse could it be??????? A day spent fishing beats sitting at home. Thanks for the replies.

I'm heading to Seneca Saturday and Sunday and was wondering how fishable Seneca would be with the forecast of 18-20 MPH winds Saturday from the WNW. If that spells disaster, I might delay fishing to the last few hours Saturday. Thanks,

do you have a wire diver set up ????? Mark, I don't have wire rods and didn't have the copper ones at Seneca last week. I was hoping to hit the 90-100' depths with copper and a dipsey without going to wire. I might need go to wire anyway for Ontario next year. The downriggers didn't pay off last time regardless of set back. I wasn't running sliders, which I will tomorrow.

Really my only intention was to set the D/D on 3 to get it off to the side for line seperation and a little more depth without running 500-600 feet of copper to get down to 100' or so. Having marked a lot of fish down 90-100' at Seneca last week and having only 300' of copper brought up this issue. I do have riggers, but my dipsey rigs have been outperforming them all year.

Mark, I wonder why that is. It seems like there shouldn't be a difference between wire and copper other than the depth achieved.

Any idea how much 45# copper I can get on an Okuma 45DX? Also, If I run a small dipsey on the copper, would I just add the projected depth the Dipsey at x feet to the depth the copper is running to get total depth? Not sure that's the right way. Thanks!

Launched out of Watkins Glen and fished from the salt plant north about 3 miles. Really not a lot of reason to move because of all of the marks. Better days ahead.

Fished Seneca 10-3 and got beat about by 3-4 footers for most of the day. Marked plenty of fish and put out spoons, flasher/flies and plugs at various depths and set-backs, but only got one hit. Most of the marks were 50-90' down, but late in the day started to see them at 25-30 so I pulled the riggers up and used smaller dipseys. Only grab on a dipsey cut the line in about 3 seconds, so I'm guessing it was a pike. Got to pick my days better, because getting beat around by the waves takes a lot of fun out of it.

I'm curious too. I've been watching some Youtube videos by a guy named Italo Labignan and he's hitting Walleye in Nov-Dec in Ontario canadian waters. Are the walleye limited to the canadian side? I really hate putting up my boat in November.

Things are bad............I think!!! This is my first year at Ontario and I've been waiting all year for late August/early September to roll around and get into the fantastic fishing I hear about. My last two trips were the slowest of the year. I was doing better in May/June. Hopefully things come together before they're all stream-bound. Does the BT and Steelhead bite hold up later in the lake?

I've heard of guys dragging their balls on the lake bottom. I assume that it stirs the mud and looks like feeding fish. My question is whether this can be more productive than just running 5' off of the bottom and whether there are certain times/conditions where this is a good strategy. Also, couldn't you just attach a 5'+ peice of chain on the ball with 80' test to reduce the chances of hanging the weight and losing the ball. Any info appreciated. Thanks, Doug