First time on Lake Ontario, looking for advice..

[cussond]

Hello all forum members,

I'm planning my first Lake Ontario fishing trip. I could use all the assistance and advice I can get as I'm totally new to fishing Salmon on LO. I have a 17' Lund ProSport with 2 electric downriggers, 957c Humminbird sonar and a few rod and line counter reels etc.. I did a lot of reading off this forum on all kind of interesting topics (ie; approx depth that people are catching, colour, type of spoon etc..) What I need assistance on is the following:

- will be heading out to Port Darlington for the week of Aug 13th, and was wondering how far from shore should I fish at or around what depth?

- what radio channel are people using to share results

- seems like people are targetting school of bait fish to determine how deep to fish. Is that the approach to take?

- anything else you can recommend

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Denis

[howitzer]

We fish out of whitby so you wont be far from us that weekend....fishing channel is normally 69....tune in and you'll hear some action of people hittin fish.

As for depth...it really depends but it's probably safe to say...go from about 120-200 and you'll hit something.

for bait fish....we always hit huge schools of bait fish....doesn't make any difference for us...we always catch fish when the screen is clear for the most part. I'd say just go out there and have some fun...hopefully the weather is nice.

[reelintense]

Agree with howitzer above....hit depths from 100-200+ fow, trolling north and when you get a bite or two, stay in the area for a few minutes. My key to catching fish is spread and variety, and varying your speeds at time. Start with a 2.5 SOG speed and go up or down from there if your not catching fish.

Not sure if your fishing alone or with someone, but assuming there are 2 of you and you can run upto 6 poles, the key is getting lures at multiple depths. Hopefully you have fished with dipsy divers, because this allows you to fish out to the sides and down, while also running your riggers. My initial set up is always one dipsy off each side of the boat, both pulling spin doctors with flies. White or green spin doctors, with green or blue or glow flies seem to work best for me. At this time of the year, I would set both dipsies at 2.0 to 2.5 settings and run one of them 275-300 feet back and the other 200-225 feet back. This should park the lures in that 50-70' foot of water

I run the deep rigger at 80-90 feet with a pro-troll flasher and fly, and then run a second stacked line on that about 40 feet up with a spoon. Run your leads from the rigger only about 10-15 feet. I am not a fan of long leads, except on the deepest ball. Too many chances of other lines getting tangled if you run long leads.

I run the other rigger at around 20 above the deep rigger, also with a spoon. I.e if 90 foot on deep rigger, I would run 70 foot on the other rigger...or 80-60 foot...something like that. For the 6th rod, you can stack it 30 foot above your shallow rigger or run something like a 10 color leadcore out the chute, directly behind the boat, to keep any high fish in the top 30 fow honest. Vary colors on the spoons, silver and bright colors on a sunny day and darker colors on a cloudy day. IMHO

If you do it right you should be able to put 6 lures in the water from 30' to 90', or around every 10 feet. As you get hits in the same area or at the same depths, make some adjustments to put more lures in or around that depth, but dont try and bunch everything or you will find out how quickly a fish or current can tangle lines.

Watch reports on here to see what temps and depths people are getting hits. Since it changes daily, we cant really tell you too far in advance what specific depth will be the hot one....so watch, listen and search.

Good luck

[W.W.IV.]

I don't think the north shore can fish 6 rods, chech the book for your side of the lake. Oh Good luck and be safe, .

[cussond]

This is great guys. Thank you.

I'm heading out with my wife therefore I will go with 4 lines max to avoid getting all tangle. Especially since I'm new at this. But thanks for the heads up W.W.IV. I will definately try all the approach you've described reelintense. It certainly make sense and sounds like what I've read in other threads. With that excellent info and the confident tone in howitzer message, I'm getting pretty anxious to get there and get fishing. Hopefully we'll hear good reports on channel 69 and that the weather copes.

Again, thanks a bunch guys and good fishing!! Hopefully I will have pictures and stories to report back.

Denis