2-22 Sodus Report (derby wrap-up)

[Finders Keepers]

Well, today was interesting to say the least! Ventured out on the ice at o'dark thirty this morning and tried to find my honey hole from yesterday by flashlight. Unfortunately the wind over night had lightly blown the snow so that everything looked the same. So I took my best guess and drilled my first hole at 6:05 am. I set-up a NW-SE spread with the tip-ups and firgured once it got light I could re-evaluate my position and move if necessary. Once it got light I realized I had set-up a bit north and east of yesterday's fish fest (in the middle of the islands east of the tip of Newark). I decided to wait a bit before moving to see how my current position would pan out. In the meantime some other guys set-up in my previous area, so I had to stay put. Over the next hour a TON of people flooded onto the ice. From set-up until 9am is was slooooow: I only caught a couple 12" perch and one 6 lb northern. So I decided to start moving my tip-ups. My thinking was that all the noise and traffic from the crowd (all south, west, and north of me) either had the fish hunkered down or pushed to the east. So I decided to re-orient my spread east-west and spread east of my position. I then started to get action on the easternmost tip-ups, so over the course of the day I slowly kept moving my spread further south and east. Ended the day at 2:30 and was 5 for 14 on pike and had iced around 25 or so perch. Largest pike today was 9.5 lbs and I kept one perch to weigh-in that tipped the scales to 1.3 lbs. The pike were strange today as they were just sitting under the hole after tripping the tip-ups...

I had one HUGE pike on that continually circled the hole the entire time I fought it, and I wondered what in the world it was doing. I soon found out that it knew by doing just that, the line was sliding along the ice at the base of the hole. On about the 10th time up to the hole, the line caught on the ice, the fish did two big head skakes and was gone as the line cut on the ice. I never saw the fish, but it was smart and it felt BIG...

Back at Abe's I was pleasantly surprised to see that both of my fish were still on top and there was only 45 minutes left for weigh-in. With 20 minutes to go an angler came in and said he had a big perch to weigh in.... But it was only 1.6 lbs. Phew! 4pm came around and no more weigh-ins!! I took 1st in both Pike and Perch divisions!! Yee-haw! Take a look in the upcoming publications of the Fingerlakes Times for tourny pics. Now I can look forward to the next tournament in March!!

[W.W.IV.]

Tim, you did good nice work. I saw a lot of guys looking for yesterdays hot spot.

[woody 184]

Tim Congrats.... Nice job!!!!....

[strizzy]

Most impressive! Congrats!

[FISHINMAN]

Big time CONGRATS! Way to make us LOU guys proud!

[Gator]

Congratulations! Between you and Gambell, we're going to get a reputation going for LOU guys!

Did you find that the perch had started poking into the shallows, or were they still out in the basin between the islands? I was planning on Sodus yesterday, but a friend had a commitment at 11am, so we hit Irondequoit instead. Surprisingly, we did well in 30 fow. Nothing shallow, though.

Gator

[daker1979]

WTG Tim.....................

[Finders Keepers]

Thanks for the congrats everyone!!

Gator - The perch are pretty much scattered everywhere and have not congregated in the shallows yet. However all of the really big ones I have caught have been out deep (20+ fow).

Hindsight, I should have fished over by Shaker Heights/Third Creek on Sunday to try to ice a walleye and take all three categories!! But there was the chance that my fish from Saturday wouldn't hold, and I had them dialed in, so I figured I should try for larger pike and perch. If I have a banner first day next time I may try to target the walleye on the second day...