Storm Warning II at the Bar...

[Storm Warning II]

Fishing Report

Your Name / Boat Name: Storm Warning II

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TRIP OVERVIEW

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Date(s): 9/6/10

Time on Water: 4 1/2 hrs.

Weather/Temp: low 60s felt colder!

Wind Speed/Direction: SW 10 - 15K

Waves: 2 to 3s and building...

Surface Temp: 69

Location: The Fence to about 2 1/2 miles east of the red can

LAT/LONG (GPS Cords):

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FISHING RESULTS

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Total Hits: 4

Total Boated: 4

Species Breakdown: KINGS

Hot Lure: 8" double white crush on white Spin Doc w/ glow ATOMMIK Pro Am Fly, 8" double pearl on white Spin Doc with Pearl Glo ATOMMIK

Trolling Speed: 3.2

Down Speed: 2.4

Boat Depth: 215 to 245

Lure Depth: 80 to 125

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SUMMARY & FURTHER DETAILS

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FINALLY got on the water for a little bit in less than stellar conditions after the big blow on Saturday and Sunday. Found the outside of the chalky / mud water at a little past 200 fow and set up on the fence. At a standstill had 50 down 85 and set up from there. Shortly after 7 rods went in the water the probe rigger at 50 degrees fires and a very nice 18# Silver teenager comes to the net on the Glow Pro Am. Reset that rigger and it fires again, not five minutes later. Hmmm - could be a great morning! That rigger shot resulted in a DEEP hooked 20# Buck that would do nothing but make me do circles as he was bound and determined to get into everything on the port side. After 2 1/2 360s he came to the net. Got a little too far east and bumped into warmer water and kept dropping everything to get back into temp when the starboard wire fires and the rip is on. A nice battle with the broadest buck I have ever seen finally yields a high 23# buck that if it were about 8" longer would have definitely been 30#. Nice fish, very nice fight. Nothing moved for the next 45 mins or so, so we picked and made a tedious, run against the waves and current back to the Canadian line. Reset and about 45 minutes in fired the same starboard wire again with what appeared to be a shaker. After it was brought to net we found a 6# fully mature? 'nookie. What's wrong with him? We all caught a fish, the waves were building and we decided to pack it in and head for PA.

First trip we ever really got screwed by the weather on the O, disappointing, especially in a year with so many good fish around.

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

Yes, those are fully mature "Jacks". There are many of them around. Over the years, the theories that I have heard from dedicated biologists: 1) when surplus food is around(which we clearly have this year), the growth rate is so fast that many males mature early. They are viable, and die after spawning. 2) when there are weak year classes, which we certainly have after the egg taking debacle a few years ago, young males will mature early to make up for the shortage of migrating Salmon. 3) a year class with great survival will express itself with many more of these precocious "Jacks".

Glad you only caught the weather bad once. We lost one day of the Niagara Pro-Am, and only had 5 fishable days of the 10 Scotty Tournament days this season.

Don't give up yet. This is a rare season size-wise, and the Kings are still on the feed out west. Good Luck!

[K Gonefishin]

Storm, thanks for the report. I'm heading up thursday night to get on the water friday morning fishing till sunday afternoon. 3 days of decent weather in the forcast. Hope the conditions and temp improve. One more blow to go before we get there.

[on the lam]

Yes, those are fully mature "Jacks". There are many of them around. Over the years, the theories that I have heard from dedicated biologists: 1) when surplus food is around(which we clearly have this year), the growth rate is so fast that many males mature early. They are viable, and die after spawning. 2) when there are weak year classes, which we certainly have after the egg taking debacle a few years ago, young males will mature early to make up for the shortage of migrating Salmon. 3) a year class with great survival will express itself with many more of these precocious "Jacks".

Glad you only caught the weather bad once. We lost one day of the Niagara Pro-Am, and only had 5 fishable days of the 10 Scotty Tournament days this season.

Don't give up yet. This is a rare season size-wise, and the Kings are still on the feed out west. Good Luck!

Vince, do you know if this will have a negative impact on next years teen class. On the surface i would say yes. Wonder if its a large percentage that mature under the present conditions. We had several of those mature dark Jacks last week.

[RodBuster]

I was about to post this picture of my 16 year old and ask why this looked like a mature. This must be one of those fish you talked about. It was two weeks ago.

[Traveling Circus]

We caught two of those fish last Thursday evening off Sandy........ I didn't know what I was looking at! They looked ready to run the creek, but were only 12 lbs or so......

[Gill-T]

With an intact adipose fin those could be natural repro. fish and because they spent more time in a river system eating zooplankton and other invertebrates instead of food pellets in a hatchery they start small and stay small. I caught some little kings approx. 15" in the Two-Heart river in the U.P. where nat. repro rules the day. These fish were in spawing pods with males and females all similar in size with spawning colors.

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

Pete, its hard to say if an excess amount mature early if we will feel it later on when that class should mature. Lets hope its because we had super survival of that year class and it will flow through the "pipeline" with big numbers back in a couple years.

[Storm Warning II]

The mini-mature we caught did NOT have the adipose intact. It was a stocked fish.

That's pretty much what ours looked like RodBuster - definitely dark

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

We have caught many of them the last two weeks both off Olcott, and on the bar. They have all had their adipose clipped and were stocked.

[lilboat]

We got some dark 10-12 lbers off Oswego also, mixed in with the bigguns last week.

I asked RJ if they were in fact adults going spawning or did the juveniles also darken up?

Its interesting how they change colors/bahavior and what causes the change.

[Capt Vince Pierleoni]

The males seem to darken earlier than the females. There seems to be a connection between spending time in and acclimating to warmer water and their darker coloration.

The best theory I have heard from biologists is mother nature converts them from the silver, which hides them best from their prey in open water, to the darker coloration to conceal them from their river predators like bears and birds of prey.

[lilboat]

Thanks for the info. Do the more males go first on a run or do more females go up first?