John E Powell

I'll be traveling from Niagara Falls to Sodus for the Pro/Am this weekend. It's been years since I've been east of Oak Orchard and am wondering what are the must see tackle stores between the Oak and Sodus? I am good with Narby's and Captain's Cove at the Oak, just need suggestions from there on East.

The Lake Ontario Trout and Salmon Association (LOTSA) held their annual club Salmon Tournament and Family Picnic this past Saturday, July 13 for club members and their families and guests. This was a catch and release big fish tournament, so the goal for teams fishing the tournament was to catch and one large fish. Teams were required to call in each fish as it is landed to tournament control to determine if it may be in contention for a prize; in this way, teams could practice catch and release of smaller fish not in contention for a prize. Weather reports called for winds to build during the day from calm overnight conditions, so the tournament started as planned, but by 7:00 AM it was clear that the weather forecast was optimistic as strong East/Northeasterly winds early in the morning quickly built two to four foot waves making it quite challenging for the 29 teams entered in the tournament to fish. Fishing was really good throughout the morning; the bite was strong up until about 11:00 AM when the radio fell silent as the bite ended. Some teams stopped fishing before the end of the tournament having boxed a contender early-on in the day; while others pounded it out in the rough water hoping to make their mark on the leader board. By the end of the tournament few boats remained fishing as the waves had built to three-five footers. Teams fished out of the ports of Niagara River, Wilson, Olcott, Golden Hill and Oak Orchard, but the largest class of fish, including the overall winner, was caught from the area extending half way between Wilson and Olcott on the West to a few miles East of Olcott. Early morning, the bite seemed to be in shallower waters with the best depths of water being 100-150 feet and later on a mid-morning bite was strong in 200-275 feet of water. Various attractor-fly combinations proved to be the top baits catching the vast majority of contending fish. At the close of fishing, the weigh-in revealed team Fish Styx, consisting of (from left to right) Captain Tim Bromund and his father Bob Bromund, and Gary Melnyk and his son Mac Melnyk bested the competition with a 40†chinook salmon weighing 28.97lb. Fishing in waters from 200-250 feet deep, they caught many of their fish on downriggers fished 85-100 foot deep. Wire line divers fished at 200-300 foot were also productive. Most fish were caught on rotating attractors and flies. Attractor-fly combos were the top bait of the day for other teams as well. For their effort, team Fish Styx won the first place prize of $580. Here’s Gary, Mac, and Captain Tim with their fish at the weigh in:   Finishing in second place earning $435, and coming off a second place finish in the Curt Meddaugh memorial fishing tournament the previous day, with a 36†chinook salmon weighing 25.76 lb. was team Fisherman’s Daughter consisting of Greg Wiacek and his daughter Cathie Wiacek, and Patrick Comerford. Here’s a photo of Greg with his 2nd place fish: In third place earning $290 was team HK1 with a 36†Chinook salmon weighing 25.17 lb. Team HK1 members were father and son (and new LOTSA members) Chris and Braden Petrucci, and Robert McKinley. Here’s Braden and Chris with their fish at the weigh-in: It’s been a very long time since we had our last tie (sometime back in to early 80s) but that is what we had happen with two teams vying for 4th place. Team Toothy Critters and team Reel Scream each weighed in a Chinook salmon weighing 24.52 lb. Team Toothy Critters’ fish measured 36.5†in length and team Reel Scream’s fish measured 37â€. According to tournament rules, only weight is a deciding factor, so prize money was divided equally with each team receiving $145. The Toothy Critters team consisted of Captain Gary House and Dennis Hoffman. Here’s a photo of their fish:   Team Reel Scream members for the day was the Husband and wife team of Frank and Amy Schmidhamer. Here’s Frank with their fish: Six other teams weighed-in fish that were in contention for a prize at the time they were caught. Team Black Jaw’s fish weighed in at 24.23 lb.: Playin’ Hookie’s Jeff Smith caught this 24.17 lb. chinook salmon:   Here’s Salmonella’s entry at 23.89 lb.:   Here’s 4-Poles’ entry at 23.85 lb.:   Here’s Mean Machine’s entry at 22.18 lb.: And here’s the final fish that was in contention early on in the day from team toaster at 20.88 lb.:   Here’s the crew frying all blackened salmon caught the previous day during the 3rd annual Curt Meddaugh memorial three-fish tournament (in the fryer on the left) and some donated walleye (in the fryer on the right): One of the many trays of blackened salmon: And that fantastic walleye so graciously donated: http://www.lotsa.org/ (click on the fish to enter the website) http://www.lotsa.org/2013_online_memberform.htm to join LOTSA

The Lake Ontario Trout and Salmon Association (LOTSA) held their 3rd annual Curt Meddaugh memorial Fishing Tournament this past Friday, July 12 for club members. The goal for teams fishing the tournament was to catch and weight their three largest fish; the combined weight of the three fish determining the winner. Weather conditions Friday morning tested the twenty-two teams who signed up to fish the tournament; strong Northeasterly winds early in the morning quickly built two to four foot waves making it quite challenging to fish. Some teams called it quits early on, but those teams who braved the rough water were rewarded with impressive catches of Salmon. At the close of fishing, the weigh-in revealed the 4-Poles fishing team, consisting Marty Polovick, Kyle Hovak, and Kevin Flaherty bested the competition with three fish weighing a total of 56.04 pounds. Fishing in waters from 100-250 ft deep, they caught many of their fish on downriggers fished 70-100 foot deep. Divers set at 200-300 foot and copper lines of 300 and 400 foot were also productive. Most fish were caught on Dreamweaver Spin Doctors and A-Tom-Mik flies. Attractor-fly combos were the top bait of the day for other teams as well. Second place, with a three-fish combined weight of 50.45 pounds went to team Fisherman’s Daughter consisting of Greg Wiacek and his daughter Cathie Wiacek, and Patrick Comerford. Third place, for their combined weight score of 48.43 pounds went to the Slammin Salmon team of Matt Dunn, Marc Dunn, and Doug Parker. At the close of the weigh in, all the fish were cleaned in preparation for the annual LOTSA club picnic blackened salmon fry to be held the following day at the pavilion in the Newfane Town Marina. This tournament is a free tournament for members of LOTSA. First prizes was $300 and a hand-held digital fish scale, second prize was $200, and third $100. http://www.lotsa.org/ (click on the fish to enter) To join LOTSA click here: http://www.lotsa.org/2013_online_memberform.htm

Still looking for a couple more in decent shape.

The easiest way to get rid of them off your line is to minimize their ability to stick to your line in the first place. Many people change over to 30lb test this time of year. 30lb test seems to be large enough in diameter to prevent their hooklike body appendages from catching ahold of your line. Some people just put a topshot of 150' or so of 30 lb line on top of their existing line. Others respool their reels with 30 lb. Still others change over to another set of reels for the summer/fall flea season.

If you lost a fly but not the attractor, you had either a nick in the fly line, or the line may have fouled on the hook itself and been cut by the hook. In either case, it is unlikely a snubber would have made any difference given your line between the diver and attractor held up to the load of the fish (and is probably 1/2 the lb test of the fly line that broke).

This a Ford vs Chevy type question that has been asked before and hashed over in the past with no concensus, nor do I predict this time will settle either. Pro snubber camp says snubbers keep fish on the hook better once hooked, Anti snubber camp says snubbers don't give as good a hookset as without running snubbers. I only run them on steelhead/rainbow lines fished shallow when they are likely to skyrocket out of the water numerous times. IMO the drag of the line through the water is all the snubber you need. That's why I would run a snubber for jumping fish, at that time there is not drag on the line between the fish and diver.

I would think that if you maintain a reasonably straight troll and speed, and have your dipsy rod horizontal to the water, you should be able to send your copper out over your diver just fine.

Start the day with your outside lines first then work towards the center, it's just easier that way as you can let things out more quickly. During the day when you have your diver lines in the water and you want to let your planers out, let out your copper/core, attach your board, let the board out with minimal tension, just keep the planer upright but not so much tension that it starts to pull to the side. Once you get the board well behind the boat, tighten the line and let the planer pull to the side. It will be well behind your divers. If you are running two or more inline planers per side, you can change outside planers by dropping your rod tip into the water and holding it there for a minute or so as you troll forwards. All the line between your rod and planer will now be in the water and will drag back your planer somewhat. Don't be in to much of a hurry to reel it in because as the planer drops back from the extra drag, that copper or core behind it will sink a bit because it is going slower as the planer falls back. In a minute or so, it will have fallen behind as much as it is going to and will again be running the same speed as before and will raise back up in the water column. I usually wait about 30 seconds to 1 minute after the planer stops falling back behind the boat. Then, hold your rod tip low and bent towards the opposite side of the boat and reel the planer in very quickly. Keep the rod tip low to the water, Do not raise the rod tip until the planer is close enough to the boat that raising your rod tip will lift it out of the water. When running a rod down the chute, add a large 4" or so cork bobber to your line after you let out your copper/core. Then let out more line and run this so the float looks to be about 100' behind the boat, When your small to average size fish hits on other lines, freespool this rod for a minute and let the cork float fall back to 2-300 feet behind the boat. All the line between your rod and the float will be on the surface and usually fish hooked on other lines won't tangle this unless they jump over the chute line (which is very rare). If it's a large fish, a screamer, just reel the chute line in like you normally would instead of letting it back. Keeps your chute rod fishing instead of reeling this rod all the way in and out for every fish hooked on other rods.

Just a reminder, the meeting is tonight!

There is no correct answer to this because different rods have different power and actions. It helps to understand what rod action means. Rod action is the rate at which a rod returns back to a state of rest when flexed and then released. A fast action rod does this quickly and a slow action rod does this slowly. These are terms that are helpful for people who are holding the rods in their hands and casting lures/bait. Fast action rods are good at transmitting "jerky" actions to lures, desirable when your fishing with jigs for instance. Slow action rods are useful when consistency of retrieve is more important. Now we don't cast our trolling rods, but the action of rods have other characteristics that we do use to help us identify desirable trolling rods. Actions range from extra fast, to fast, to moderate or medium, to slow. Sometimes you will see an action between two main actions like medium/fast action. For trolling rods, we can think of action being an indicator of where the majority of the rod bends when lifting a weight equal to the rod's intended power capabilities. To test and determine a rod's action, rods are held horizontally and then a weight is suspended from the tip (the angle between the suspended weight and horizontal rod being 90 degrees) and this weight being equal to the weight the rod is intended to lift. The amount of the rod that bends under this load is an indication of action. Extra fast rods bend mostly in the top 1/4 of the rod. Fast action rods will bend in the upper 1/3 of the rod. Moderate or medium action rods will bend in the upper 1/2 of the rod. Slow action rods will bend well beyond the 1/2 way point of the rod, even into the handle area. The best action for our trolling rods is medium/moderate to medium fast/moderate fast. Diver rods, which have to hold their lines outside and around side mounted downrigger cables, should have a fast action to gain the extra reach necessary to keep the diver lines clear of the downrigger cables. Now, to most efficiently subdue a fish and bring it to net, a reels drag should be set so that when a fish runs, it bends the rod to its action point, the point where you notice the rod transitions from soft to stiff. If you set a drag too tight and load it into the stiff section, you will pull hooks from fish or begin to experience other tackle failures, especially with low stretch or no stretch fishing lines like the braid and wire we use for diver fishing or the copper we use on long lines. If we set our drags too loose, we're just prolonging the time it takes to bring a fish to net because we're not efficiently loading the rod and letting it do the work it is intended to do, subdue and tire fish. So the answer is, choose a rod that has the intended power you need for the task. Look at line ratings and lure weight ranges to clue you in on this, if it doesn't outright say on the rod that it is intended for a task like downrigger or diver fishing. We call these task specific rods. The manufacturer has determined the correct power and action for you. Nowadays, there are task specific downrigger, planer, inline planer, copper, diver, magnum diver, thumper rods, and more. Match the power to the kind of task or experience you want, and choose your reels capacity with a given line weight to compliment this power. Then just set your reel's drag to load the rod to its action point and you will be in business. After a while, you will get a feel for this and know when a drag is too loose or too tight and it will be second nature to adjust it properly without really thinking about it.

If you are rigging them with snubbers, try them without the snubbers maybe.

That's where we met them. We used to have our boat each year in the LOTSA booth over in the corner of the convention center. My dad used to set up a table behind the boat and sell his squids as one of the fund raisers. I remember the first time George walked by and stopped at the table looking over all the squids and introduced himself. My dad had a bunch of unique west coast squids he had just gotten from Richard (Dick) Johnson. (For those of you that don't know who Dick Johnson was, he was another innovator in salmon trolling products. He was making and selling rotating flashers back in the 70s, maybe before that, I'm not sure). Anyway, George said something like, I have never seen those color patterns before, would you like to trade a few for some stuff you don't have on display? George took about a dozen squids and returned later with a bag of about 50 flies. Later that evening we went out to dinner together with George and his Brother and spent the evening chatting. Vince you are right, that was about the time he told us to try running just the fly inserts without the squids. He had experimented with that the previous summer but was keeping it hush-hush at that time. I think it was the next year he introduced his rigged flies. Each year after that, my father and him traded their latest creations when he returned to the convention center. When he stopped doing that show, I think my father and him kept in contact for a few years but then lost track of each other. I found a few more flies, some green glow flies, and some of the sparkle and crinkle variations. I remember George telling my dad his favorite was the sparkle fly with the three or four different colored beads. I sort of recall, humorously, that George didn't really like the way my father rigged his squids. One of the methods was to use a 4/0 true turn 2x catfish hook and a silver plated willow leaf blade. (He had those plated by the Sutton Spoon guy I think, but maybe I am wrong on that). The willow leaf would tuck up inside the squid body with the hook. Beads and a nose plug would keep the back of the hook and the tip of the willow leaf right at the end of the squid tentacles. The willow leaf had a really nice flash behind a dodger, looked just like a baitfish tail. George didn't like those because they didn't use any tinsel inserts, which he sold, and they caught a lot of fish! His brother Dave recently passed. I don't think my dad knew Dave as well as George, and I never had much contact at all with Dave. Here's a link about Dave Richey: http://record-eagle.com/local/x1912992397/Writer-dedicated-life-to-outdoors/print

I crawled around on of those at the Toronto Boat show. It looks like a much sturdier boat than your typical aluminum boat, though a little lacking in the creature comforts and fishing features found on many more traditional aluminum fishing boats like a Lund or Crestliner. My favorite was the toy hauler with the drop down bow, much like a WWII landing craft. Does Stanley make that model also, or was that from a competitor?

Started fishing at 9:15. Made 2 downwind trolls from Seneca shoal towards entrance buoy. First pass 1/2 of two person limit mostly worm harnesses. Purple, watermelon, green, dipsy with ring on 3.5 70ft out, 6 and 4 color cores, Overcast light conditions 1-3 footers. Picked up and ran back upwind a bit for another downwind troll. Second pass other 1/2 of limit mostly 5" minnow body baits of similar colors, same dipsy rigging, and 5 color core off inline planer. Rough water but fishable. Bright conditions 2-4 footers.

Has anyone determined what size Spro Swivel will allow you to make a double pass of 60lb through the eye of the swivel? And which style, "heavy" swivel or "power" swivel?

Woops, I discovered my link to the needle knot in my previous post was bad so I edited the post and corrected the mistake. Sorry about that.

Yep, 20-25 feet of leader works well. Here are a couple ways to attach your leader to your lead core: Willis Knot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge0VCeJOdc4 Needle Knot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBClN_Ck2zY Lead core to Swivel (I use a Spro) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XkmHPX_mSk I think the best of the three is the third method using the needle with a swivel on both ends of the lead core.This method allows you to use tiny Spro swivels that will eliminate line twist in your rig. If you don't want to use swivels then either of the first two methods will serve you well. Here are some additional thoughts: I especially like how the guy in the needle knot video uses a needle and flame to melt the Dacron sheath to keep it from fraying. This is a great tip. It helps keep the end of the Dacron, where it is spliced to the backing, (which faces upwards towards our rod and reel) from getting fouled with fleas and makes it a lot easier to pass through our rod guides and reel's levelwind. I do this when I tie a Willis knot, I recommend you do this also. The needle knot works better than a Willis for tying braided super lines like Power Pro to lead core. I've pull-tested the Willis with super braids and have had it slip. I have not tried pull testing the double Willis on a knot tester with super lines; I hear that the Double Willis will hold super lines without slipping. (The double Willis is just two overhand loops instead of one cinched down about 1cm apart from each other). When spooling a reel and you want to use Power Pro for backing, use the needle knot to attach the core to Power Pro backing, and the "melted" Willis knot to attach your leader to the lead core. When spooling a reel and you want to use mono backing, use a "melted" Willis knot on both ends of the lead core. If you have to retie a leader on the water, do a standard Willis, but then redo the leader with a "melted" Willis back at the dock. One final thought; it can be quite difficult to get the Power Pro to pass through the lead core's Dacron sheath because it is so limp under compression. I found that if I apply some white water-soluble glue like Elmers Glue to the power pro and let it dry, it will become stiff enough to easily pass through the lead core’s Dacron sheath. Just make sure to pull the Power Pro through your fingers to remove all the excess glue, and lay it down straight on some wax paper or aluminum foil until it dries. If you’re in a hurry, you can use a hair dryer to speed up the drying process.

I was going through my Dad's old fishing tackle and came across a few Richey Flies. (I'm not sure if I have the spelling right as they were not in the original packaging). Am I recalling correctly that the man who made these was George Richey from somewhere in Michigan? It was probably 30+ years ago that my dad and him corresponded with each other and traded his flies for my dad's squids. Looking at them, I was thinking that the colors of flies he sold 30 years ago are remarkably similar to the "hot" flies of today. Given all the changes in the Great Lakes ecosystems over the past 30 years, history seems to have proven that Mr. Richey introduced many proven bait patterns that have stood the test of time. I wonder, is Mr. Richey still with us?

Is your outboard turning on you? If so, maybe you need to tighten the pivot point so it doesn't turn on you when you let go of the wheel. Autopilots can be fitted to smaller boats with outboard power at various price points. But you might also consider a corded or wireless remote steering controller.

Heh, glad I could help...

I'd consider one of the new models that can send you position to rescue authorities in case of an emergency. The latest models are self-contained and don't require you to connect them to a GPS or an on-board network. It a nice safety feature to have. Here's an example: http://www.standardhorizon.com/indexVS.cfm?cmd=DisplayProducts&ProdCatID=83&encProdID=8E6B84CBCC75E5A9C52CA71AA33BA6F5&DivisionID=3&isArchived=0 Not sure about that link, if it doesn't work go to Standard Horizon, click on "products", then click on "fixed mount VHF", the you will see a link for "Explorer GPS (name) or GX1700 (model number)"