Sodus Pro am 2019

[rdebadts]

I look forward to the Sodus Pro am every year.  It is a fascinating tournament- sometimes it's all about kings, sometimes it's all about browns... you have to be versatile. Plus, it's home for us!

 

I fished last Monday and knew there were browns around, so that plan was already stowed away.  I heard all week about kings, and guessed that would be the program

 

Friday:

I haven't fished kings in almost a month, so we were in search mode.  My goal was to find areas with active fish, mark em, and move on.  So, we set down in 100 on a NW troll off the trailer park.  Immediately we were into mature kings, boating 3 15-18 lb kings in the first 2 hours.  with those waypoints stowed, we headed deeper, and banged a few more mature kings in 150 FOW.  we stowed those waypoints and moved NE- when we crossed 200 FOW, we banged 3 more kings.  I decided to turn around in that water as it looked really good (mostly to make sure it really was that good) and banged 4 more fish (3 kings and a steelie).  then we pointed north, and located some nice steelies out in 330-400 FOW straight out.  For good measure, we boated another nice king in 150 FOW on the long troll in.  

Everything worked.  Our best rigs were meat on chinook dipseys out 120-180 and riggers with UV spoons down 45-65.  we ended the day with ~20 bites, and all but 5 were on kings 14 lbs plus.  we even got to do a bunch of catch and release.  Needless to say, I felt pretty good about our prospects!

 

Saturday:

I was pretty confident.  I had 4 batches of waypoints to work, and a bunch of lures that I knew would go.  Our temp profile was about the same (temps were 54F down about 55) when we set down.  But our screens didn't look nearly as good?  we worked our 120 waypoints... nada.  We worked our 150 waypoints... nada.  we worked out to 200 FOW and did finally hit a 20 lb king, a skipper that we had to throw back, and missed another.  But our screens looked like absolute crap, and the ones we did see were VERY negative?  we opted to work east a bit, and rotted for about 3 hours.  I was dying.  So at 10:45, we decided to run out to 330 to at least pick up a few steelies for a morale booster.  We were greeted out there by barren screens all the way out to about 460.  I knew that weighing 1 fish will eliminate me for tomorrow, so we opted to run in and pick on brownies just for points.  we banged a small brown right away, missed one, then watched fish after fish rise to look at our rig, then dive back down.  It happened all day, not sure why?  we picked up a pretty 25 inch Atlantic at 1:35 that we had to throw back, and we weighed in 2 fish????  I haven't had a day that bad in several years.

 

Sunday:

we saw that some of the guys that did well Saturday were literally right next to us in ~200 FOW.... the bite just turned on later for them.  we opted to stay in 100-200 FOW all day the night before- that turned out to be a good decision, just based on the weather.  It was pretty gnarly out there.  We ran out in 2-3s and pretty quickly got into some 4s and perhaps even some 5s.  it was a tremendous pain to maintain speed and direction, but the fish were more cooperative for us.  In fact, our first fish came just 3 minutes into fishing time.  we boated 4 majors in the first 1.5 hours of fishing (24, 21, 20 and 13 lbs)- two on meat down 160 on the dipsey and 2 on riggers with spoons down 70-80.  All of our hits came trolling west.  Our bite died at 8 am, and we never really got back on them.  we did take a steelie out in 200 FOW that we threw back, and that was it.  we missed our last 5 hits in 120 FOW around noon, mostly on meat rigs, and went in with just 4 kings?!?!?!?  It was not fun out there- we had a bunch of tangles and popped dipseys from fighting the waves.

 

Ill be the first to tell you that I have NO idea why our fishing was so epically bad on Saturday.  No clue.  the fish were very negative for us.  They would streak up, look at our rigs, and dive down.  we tried longer leads, shorter leads, lighter line, going slower, going faster, down and outs....didn't matter.  

 

It was a humbling tournament (and 2 days of fishing) for me.  My team did everything right and deserved better.  Fortunately it was a good time overall and the tournament was VERY well run.  Ill be back next year, hopefully with a lot better results!  

 

The kings are huge this year, so get out there and kill em!

 

 

[signalman]

Great post i will be out there tomorrow

[Gill-T]

It was a later bite on Saturday. We left the dock at around 1:00 and fished the afternoon. Fish were very aggressive wanting flasher/flies and mostly ignored spoons. People I spoke to at the launch had a slow morning. Kings especially feel those subtle changes to weather.  There were some small storm cells nearby that would kick up the wind briefly. If you were over fish when those changes happened, you would get bit. 

[blueghost1]

I've had a similiar LOC this month out of Hughes . 150ish has been good but alot of search mode . Same waypoints were ghost towns from day before. The 6th we put up a 26.5 king good for 2nd place that I have painfully watched fall to 20th and prob off the grid by end of today lol. Figured it would stay somewhere. After 2 days I had given up on the 40 to 50 ft marks and concentrated deeper riggers and divers. Fewer bites but better quality of fish . Finally this past Friday smaller uv spoons were firing steady in the 50ft range. Bagged a 22# female then got chased off by an incoming storm . I've had like a 30% catch ratio last 4 trips for some reason . Alot of short hits maybe . All new spoons and fly rigs . 2.8 to 3.0 down speed and pockets of 44 to 46 deg water were our ticket .

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[TOP SECRET]

I feel your pain, we had a tough weekend as well.  We had the bites, we just couldn't get them to stick.  We would have been happy with blueghost's 30% ratio  The good news out of all of this, it looks like the rest of the season should be great.  I was getting worried after marking very little bait and very few hooks the past several weeks.  That changed this weekend though as there were big hooks from Rochester to Port Bay.  Looking forward to a getting back out there and getting some revenge on those kings!

[Gill-T]

Did anyone snap a shot of the results from the pro/am?

[TOP SECRET]

I have it on the Top Secret facebook group page... let me see if I can add it here as well...

[TOP SECRET]

Here are the results...