Canandaigua this Am

[Sk8man]

I was at the ramp at 4:50 am and there were already more than a half dozen trailers there and the boats already on the water....guess maybe I need to start a day ahead of time now....   I went looking for bait on west side and suspected that it was still in shallow and was I ever right....as much bait and fish in with them as I've seen in a long time. Huge clouds of sawbellies and on one of my passes I hooked a sawbelliy on each of my main downrigger lines  the sliders and the one leadcore I had out They were that thick. I later used one of the sawbellies on the leadcore without success though. The leadcore fired and it was a 4-5 lb rainbow on a doctored up Sutton 22 and  I released him and he took off immediately. I kept trolling through the bait pods back and forth but the south wind gusts made it hard to control my speed so I kept going south and came back north with the wind and marked all sorts of fish and bait but no takers. I then took off and went south to the east side  just south of the point south of Pelican Point and dropped the downrigger and leadcore back in and after about 100 yards the leadcore took off and the rod was bent right over to the water with the drag  going...at fist I thought I was hung on bottom or something but then the rod pulsated like mad and the drag went out again for what seemed like a mini lifetime....I had been right in the middle of bringing up my downrigger when he hit and don't have autostop on them so I  guess I may have put a little too much tension on the leadcore while reaching for the button and although I had the fish about half in I could feel his mouth give and then ...gone.  I had 6 colors out with about another100 ft of braid backing with a NK28 on it.  I'm pretty sure it was a very big bow or brown from the feel of it.... after that it was troll troll and troll some more without any takers so I gave up about 12:30 and headed for the circus at the launch ramp. It is worth mentioning that at about 11AM I checked the exact area 45.8 ft - 60 ft.) I had spotted all the bait and fish earlier on the west side and I now marked one tiny pod of bait and no fish...I kid you not they were gone! I am now wondering if the bait moves into the shallows at night (and the fish with them) and then goes deeper  or to the bottom somewhere in the daytime... I didn't go shallower looking so that is a possibility but with all the boat traffic in there I doubt it. The first bow came in 47 ft. water down 36 and the second about 40-45 feet down over 57 ft. In the early morning the bait and the fish appear to be in shallow at least at the north western part of the lake and along the east side heading toward Bare Hill back north to Pelican Point. Hope this saves someone some time for tomorrow morning.....good luck!

 

[ERABBIT]

I feel your pain on the lost of a big'n but it's still out there........  I can give you diagram to wire up your mag10a's for auto-stop...... your'll need a new switch and the circiut board about $90/rigger ....... If Screwy Louey still has boards and you can get the switches there also.....

[Sk8man]

Thanks Ed. I talked with Chad there a while back when I bought new power cords and I figured that as long as I have used them this way since 1985 I'd just spring for new ones when these give out (hope I don't jinx myself by saying that ). I am a bit concerned though about some of the commentary about the new ones....

 

Re: the lost fish...at least we know it wasn't the same one you lost unless there really is an underground channel connecting all these lakes   it would be a blow to our egos to know that one fish had outsmarted BOTH of us

[ERABBIT]

Re: the lost fish...at least we know it wasn't the same one you lost unless there really is an underground channel connecting all these lakes it would be a blow to our egos to know that one fish had outsmarted BOTH of us