Yankee's 2010 Spring Derby - Weekend #1

[Yankee Troller]

The weather this weekend was AMAZING! However, if there was ever a weekend I wanted some wind this was the one! There was a gnat hatch out there, and boy was it one of the worst ones I have ever seen. We had GLOBS of gnat's on our flybridge. We couldn't even think about going up there. A few made their ways into our noses, mouths, and ears, but we never stopped fishing for a derby winner! Check out some pictures of our boat from Sunday. By the way....these pictures do it no justice.

Sunday May 2nd - Today we ran a charter with a friend I met on Lake Ontario United. This was Anthony's third trip with us over the last four years. He really wanted to put his name on the LOC Derby leaaderboard, but we just weren't successful at doing so again today. The good news is we fell just one fish short of a couple dozen. I couldn't get the rods in the water this morning! We tweaked our program from the prior day, and it worked out perfect. We started off with more Lakers than Salmon, but that slowly switched as the day passed on. An NK THAT spoon took a few fish, but it didn't come close to the Dreamweaver Moon Cricket's performance. Boy was that HOT today. A few fish also took a Dreamweaver Roy Boy. Riggers were parked between 30-45 for most of the day. The flasher/fly bite on our wires died late morning, so a Dreamweaver green dolphin mag on one side and a Dreamweaver blue dolphin mag on the other side took a few more Kings. 125' was our hot number on the wires again today. Check out a few pictures from the day.

Saturday May 1st - After last weekend we were looking for a little revenge on some Salmon. Well, we got it! We spent Saturday looking for a fish to place on the derby leaderboard. We weren't successful at our goal, but we took enough fish to have some fun for a few hours. A great mix of Salmon, Cohos, and Lake trout. The Lake Trout we have been catching off the Niagara Bar have been some real beauties. 14-17 pound fish almost the norm. I might even go out on a limb and say they are becoming aggressive! We were taking them at King speeds, which really makes us shake our head. Dreamweaver's Roy Boy and an NK THAT spoon in a 28 size were the hot set-ups on our riggers parked at 30-40' down. On our wires we ran a Smart Fish (white with green dot) pulling an A-TOM-MIK Hypnotist, and a Dreamweaver Spin Doctor in a gator pattern with an A-TOM-MIK green crinkle. 150' wires were taking Lakers, so we pulled them into 125' and the Kings started to feast. We tried 5 and 10 color cores off the boards with little success, and a 300 copper run short down the chute, and that resulted in the same low success rate. Here is a nice picture of me and our largest King of the day.

The Scotty Wilson tourney is going on next weekend. 52 boat field is what I am hearing, so there will be some fierce competition out there on top of all the derby fishing going on.

[Pike Hunter]

Kudos to the boys of Yankee Trollers - thank you Rick and Craig for working so hard to put fish on the boat. We really killed em with over 25 hits!!!

Barry and I had one heck of a time taking turns with rods. Boy, you know how important my hands are when I use sign language. Both my hands and arms are too tired, therefore I did not want to "talk" too much when I got home last night. I went to bed before 9 p.m. last night.

Once again, thank you for the wonderful charter trip.

As for you who have never fished at the bar. This is the place to be!

Best of luck to all who are fishing the derby.

[Yankee Troller]

Thanks for the kind words Anthony. We had a great day with the exception of the bugs. My brother and I spent 2 hours cleaning the boat, and we still have some work left to do when we get back up there.