Ruff Rider Sodus Pro Am Report

[TOP SECRET]

First off, let me apologize for coming up a bit fast behind the pro boats on Sunday morning... I wasn't hitting the horn to be rude, I was just asking for someone to make room so we could get by, sorry if it came across that way... and thank you to the boat who finally moved out of the way so we could sneak by....

WARNING: Meat rack shots

Thursday morning:

Fishing had been down right aweful out of Sodus so far this year, so we started the day off for browns... trolled 60-100fow and never moved a rod. We knew the steelhead had been around all year, and we could hit them if we needed to, so we attempted for a few kings. We figured if we could get 3 kings each day we'd finish in the top 5 the way the past couple of pro ams went (very wrong). So we put our king rigs out and headed out to 150fow... then rods started firing as fast as I could put them back down. We stopped fishing just after noon as we would have to for the pro am and went 7 for 15. We had 5 kings and two steelies (only kept one of them). We didnt' stay on a spot as we were searching for fishing spots for the weekend. The fish just seemed to be anywhere we went. The kings hit all the way out to 450fow and the steelies anywhere from 450-550fow. Size was only averaging around 10lbs, but it was a great day of fishing with just the wife and I!

Friday morning:

Our third teammate for the pro am Jack (Echo One) joined us for some pre fishing. We had called him and rubbed in the previous day, fully expecting for fishing to return to it's normal slow pace the next day. We setup in 100fow and put our program down, even let him put some of his lures down with their stinky jelly on them and his girly pink dipsey off one side It didn't take long at all for rods to start firing. However, by the 6th fish I was really getting worried. The day before, the wife couldn't keep a fish on the dipsey and so far Jack was 0 for 4 on fish and my wife still couldn't keep a fish on the dipsey. Now it wasn't all their fault with tangles and bad luck, but still, 1 for 6 was not a good start!!! We finished 9 for 15 by a bit after noon and again hit fish all over the place! I managed to not lose a fish in the two days pre fishing and gave Jack, or O-for as we began to call him a real hard time.... well karma sucks and that would come back to bite me!

Saturday morning:

I dropped the paperwork off over at the tent and headed back to the boat. One thing I'd like to suggest for next year is letting us hand our paperwork in either the night before or earlier as 5am doesn't really leave enough time for those of us docked at other parts of port to get back to our boats and to the pier heads in time. But we got to the pier heads just as everyone started heading through the channel. We were one of the last boats out and I got to test out the new boat's speed a bit. It was pretty cool hitting 40mph and flying past some of the competition! I could only imagine their thoughts when they saw they were getting passed by a BAYLINER! Well by the time we setup, it was starting to get rough. I'm not quite as hardcore as some of you guys and so I always fish with the waves, so we headed East. It still didn't take long for our observer to start barfing, but at least my wife didn't get sick and enjoyed herself. We again started hitting fish immediately and started off with a nice 20lb king in 140fow. We then hit the 27lb 12oz king that put us on the LOC board. Almost as soon as I got the rigger down from that fish, another fish hit and it was BIGGER. The 27lber I had trouble getting to the boat due to the waves pushing us, this fish I couldn't budge once it surfaced. It was only 20 feet from the back of the boat laying on the surface and I just couldn't pull it in. After pulling on it for quite some time I was worried sooner or later the hooks were going to pull loose, so I tightened the drag and tried to drag it in.... POP! *#@*#!!!! I know it was bigger than 27lbs, and was probably the only shot I'll get this year at a 30lber and worse yet, after giving Jack such a hard time for losing fish pre fishing... I just lost a major during the tournament We hit a dry spell from 9-11 where we just couldn't get anything to go... the waves were pushing us all over the place and I had my probe up at 30ft after getting all three riggers tangled (at one point I brought up the starboard cannon ball on the port rigger ) I finally dropped the probe down and saw there was a large different between speed at 30ft and 100ft, so we slowed down and that seemed to be the trick. We took a couple of more fish to finish the day with 6. We were in 7th out of 28 after the first day. And only that one nice fish we lost out of first

Here's the big king... can you guess it's fun loving???

Sunday morning:

Ever have one of those days where it starts out so bad you just know the day is going to suck? Well at 5:00 the other team's observer hadn't shown up. I went over to their boat to see if they had heard anything... nothing. So we called her... and woke her up I didn't want to make the other team give up a member so I told them if they waited to leave until she got here, I'd wait also. A big thanks to Team Addiction for handling the situation so well. It was very frustrating to be standing at the dock listening to the amateur teams be released... the observer finally showed up and we headed out, maneuvered through the pro boats, left the pier heads and headed west. We knew the fish would be a bit further west today and as we got about 5 miles west I thought I felt the engine lose power. A bit frazzled, I turned it off and turned on the kicker. The waves were coming too hard to fish against them with the kicker, and I was a bit nervous about the engine. So I made the decision to stay out front of port in case the waves built and the main engine wouldn't work so that we could safely make it in. In hindsight, I should have taken the time to troubleshoot the engine, but we were already running late and I didn't want to take any chances with my family and friends on board. It ended up hurting us though as fishing outside of port was extremely slow. We had friends calling us all day telling us to head one way or another, but we would have had to run and I wanted to save whatever life the main engine had to get back to port. We ended the day early to make sure we could get in on time if we had to troll. The main engine ended up being fine, it was all in my head. Better safe than sorry I guess, but still kicking myself a bit. We ended up with only three fish and dropped to 13 out of 28. Again, that fish we lost would have put us in the top ten

All in all it was a really fun weekend. We did better than half the amateur boats and some of the pros in our first pro am on our boat and we got on the LOC board for the first time! We had great fishing with good friends and got to see a lot of you guys that we only see at the pro-ams.

In terms of fishing, the fish were all very deep. Temp was 62 degrees down to 100' then dropped from there. We hit fish on the riggers mostly early from 90'-130'. Dipseys were hot mostly later in the day, my Ruff Rider special (Mt. Dew flasher with Mt. Dew fly 22" behind) set on a 1 setting out 350-380 took the majority of our fish. We also took fish on a gold/blue spinny with gold/blue fly, black/pearl spinny with green fly, and a few fish on just about every other lure we had out. The leadcore was good for a few steelhead out in the 500fow range prefishing, but didn't budge in the shallower water. There was a nasty current out there and we had a LOT of tangles this weekend. Heavier than 12lb balls would have been a big advantage! Ran two dipseys off one side all weekend also and worked out real well. Even in rough water, no tangles.

Sodus was the place to be last weekend. I think 13 out of the 20 LOC salmon spots are now from Sodus! I'm glad to see my home port on the board for once! Although, I have the feeling my favorite fishing spots may be a bit busier come next summer

Nick

[Indecisive]

Nick,

It was nice to meet you and your wife on Saturday. That was an awesome cooler of fish and congrats on coming in 4th in the Derby. I don't know what to say about my buddy Jack or O-fer, he must have been having one of those days, very unusual for a guy that lands all those big fish by himself.

Chaz