6-22 Finders Keepers Atommik Challenge Report

[Finders Keepers]

Pre-fishing leading up to the event we checked out the Hughes to Pultneyville area on Thursday afternoon. We set-up over 80 fow with bait on the bottom, but no fish. So we worked deeper and found lots of pods of fish (4-10+ per pod) 60-90 ft down and it wasn't long before the 300 wire on 3 setting pulling a blue dolphin spin doc/hammer fly got hit: 8 lb laker. Then we doubled on the riggers set at 70 and 90 ft: dual lakers! After setting back up we tripled up: triple lakers! We tried going deeper in hopes the kings were hanging on the outside of the laker belt, but it was a desert, so we headed back in to the 100-140 fow range and hoped the kings were mixed in with the lakers - no such luck! We finished 14 for 20, all lakers 6-15.5 lbs (the largest hitting the deck just before 8pm, so it was released along with the others). Our spread consisted of the following:
(2) riggers (60-120 ft) pulling Stinger UV Tuxedo mag spoon, UVblue dolphin echip/chasin' tail fly, steely dan spoons on free sliders
(4) wires (180-500 ft out) pulling the following: white/raspberry spin doc/UV blue fly, blue dolphin spin doc/hammer fly, capt. valium echip/chasin' tail fly, wonderbread spin doc/glow blue hammer fly.
Best down speed: 2.5

On Friday, since P-ville was a lakerfest, I headed out solo 17 miles nw out of Port Bay. I checked every 100 ft on the way out and each stop yielded the same thing: DESERT. So I set-up over 800 fow and worked the 700-800 fow area for a couple hours running one rigger and two wires, or two riggers and one wire, or one rigger, a wire, and a leadcore. All with no luck and nothing showing on the FF. It was glass calm, and I didn't see anything surface either. So I pulled lines and headed in to our deeper waypoints from last year off Sodus, again checking every 100 ft as I came in. I set back down over 400 fow and worked my way back in to the 170 fow area where I started marking fish on the bottom and suspended 60-90 ft down. I set up a spread of two riggers and a wire. Nothing wanted to play until the last hour when I did 3 skip kings on the riggers pulling Stinger mag seasick waddlers and UV Tuxedo's.

So our plan for the Challenge was to go east of Oswego down towards the plant for browns then swing out for kings to try to upgrade them. So after DJ'ing all night at a school-sponsored event at SUNY Oswego for the seniors at my school, I met the team at Wright's at 4:30am and we headed out. We ran down towards the plant and set-down about a half mile west of the plant over 38 fow. It was 4:40am so we watched the FF as we readied the gear - it was lit-up with huge hooks! Could they be kings or monster browns?? When the clock showed 5am we started to set lines. I put down the probe rigger 25 ft with a Stinger seasick waddler mag and went to attach the free slider (another stinger seasick waddler stingray) when the line released and started pulling! FISH ON after only 10 seconds!! A couple minutes later we had a 21" skip king in the boat! So were those huge marks kings?? We were pumped! We got the rest of the spread out which consisted of (2) riggers pulling stinger seasick waddlers and NK black/green glow spoons, (2) wires pulling a wonderbread glow echip/glow hammer fly and white/green dot glow spin doc/ultra green glow fly, short copper with a stingler glow wonderbread stingray spoon, 5-color leadcore with a stinger glow frog stingray spoon, and (2) mono long lines with Stinger seasick waddler spoons. As soon as it started to get light, the screen we had disappeared and we went into search mode. We also noticed that we had heavily stained water. So we worked further east passed the plant to an area with Cold Steel and Praying Mantis. Our initial plan was to keep working east into Mexico Bay, but our first pass through yielded our first brown (4 lb football) on the 20 ft rigger pulling a Stinger UV Tuxedo Mag and we marked both bait and fish in the area, so we decided to make a couple more passes through the area to see what happened. We pulled the other rigger to change the spoon over and it had a huge 6" alwife on it! So we also switched half our spread over to UV Tuxedo's mags and stingrays and added two more long lines on the boards. On our third pass, we boated a heafty 9.5 lb brown again on a Mag UV Tuxedo on the short copper. Soon after getting the copper back out one of the long lines with a UV Tuxedo Mag got whacked and Jeff was tied into something BIG. After a little bit we could see a hefty brown coming up behind the boat and we knew we had not only a good fish for the Challenge, but a LOC fish to boot! This fish put up quite a fight behind the boat zig-zagging between lines and taking off a couple times, but we finally slid the Frabill Powercatch net under this beauty and it hit the cooler! At this point we had 4 fish in the box and 4 hours to go to get two more! We switched the whole spread over to UV Tuxedos and were ready to rock! However, we would go the next 3.5 hours without a touch! The fish were still there as we kept seeing them surface and splash, but couldn't get them to go. So with 45 minutes left, we headed to deeper water in hopes we could box a couple quick steelhead or skip kings. No such luck - 1pm came it was game over. As we started pulling lines to head in, one of the long lines took off screaming and nice sized silver started jumping and dancing behind the boat! While it was too late for the Challenge, we hoped it was a big steelhead for the LOC board. As it came up the shoot we could see its green back and we knew it was indeed a steely! A couple minutes later it hit the deck and we put it on the scale. Just shy of 9 lbs and not quite quite big enough for the LOC so it was released to fight another day.

 

At weigh-in it quickly became evident that some of the teams had found the kings putting together very nice boxes. Our big brown weighed in at 15.25 lbs and was the biggest brown to be weighed in at that point. Later an 18 lb brown was weighed in making ours the second largest. We ended up in the middle of the pack at 25th I believe. We then ran to weigh-in the brown for the LOC and landed it in 2nd place. The food and atmosphere at the awards ceremony was awesome as always as everyone shared their stories and experiences on the water. Congrats to the placing teams and also to Tom for another great, well-run tournament!! I highly encourage everyone to attend it next year as it's a blast!! See everyone back in Oswego in a couple weeks for the Oswego Pro-Am!! Until then - tight lines everyone!!

Edited June 24, 2013 by Finders Keepers

[Rippin'Line]

Nice story and good report.

[TOP SECRET]

Nice brown!!!

[stoutner]

Good job guys.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

Edited June 24, 2013 by stoutner

[1fish2fish]

Nice report Tim.

 

Next time you are going out solo, give me a call.  At least it will give you three more poles for your spread!

Jim

[reelintense]

Tim and Jeff......great report and awesome brown!!!! And too bad the Steelie wasn't much bigger. I think anyone with a 10lb 1oz or bigger Steelie is going to place! We had a 7lber this weekend. So close....hahahahaha

[challenged1]

Nice report, better to come.  I hope!

[Finders Keepers]

Thanks fellas! Yeah, this is looking like a typical year, unlike the last few where the kings were here earlier than normal and we got spoiled!! It should be good fishing from here on out.

 

Jim - I definitely will give you a call if I'm looking for a partner! I'll be heading out almost every day and I doubt my dad will be able to.