Stickbaits for Kings

[RD9]

I grew up fishing with my grandfather on Lake Ontario our of Olcott and although he doesn’t fish anymore we still talk a lot of fishing. In the early 90’s he would always run a lot of stick baits for salmon and steelhead all year year. Some of my best days salmon fishing was running diving stick baits bombers, smoos, rapala shad and others off boards. He also ran crystalinas off riggers stretched back. No temp probe just a paper graph and we went fast 3mph. He was very often more successful then a lot of the charters and in the summer we fished offshore almost exclusively. I was young but I remember catching giant steel head especially off boards on diving sticks. I’m now 35 own a nice boat and fish Ontario in the spring and run Walleye Charters on Erie all summer. Spent a lot of time trying to fish like the guys in the know on Ontario and wasn’t as successful as I would have liked. 

 

Wasnt until I started to fish like I was comfortable did I really start becoming successful. This spring I ran a lot of segmented cores with spoons and started to run less and less spin doctors. Ran bay rat long shallows clear orange specifically was great. I also noticed that I continued to catch more fish mid day.   Couple of my buddies whom Walleye fish mainly go up to Ontario also use a lot of sticks and do very especially when conditions are tough. 

 

My question is is do you guys think stickbaits are under utilized after the fish move off the shore lines?  Are many fisherman using stick baits more then discussed?

 

Ron

[Ready or Knot]

The biggest king ever caught on my boat was a 40 + lber in mid july many years ago on a pearl white long A 😁

[Gill-T]

This year was a spoon year. I took very few fish off flashers. Why??.....the water was very cool this year IMO with all the wind changing direction every other day. I could count on one hand the times I had to fish below 80’. Spoons tend to shine in the top 60’. Lots of guys run sticks for kings in the spring. If I had a choice between spoons or sticks I would chose spoons every time due to better flash attraction, array of glow colors and better hook up and land ratio due to hook configuration. Flashers shine 70’ and deeper. 

Edited December 3, 2018 by Gill-T

[lady luck]

We fish a lot in the spring time with stickbaits and have had great success. Bay Rat long shallows off leadcore or dipsy divers work great or Bay Ray long extra deep clean off the boards work too.