Bar report 5/4

[Fishtails]

Short report...

Got delayed getting out here do to a family emergency. Finally got on the water today and fished with Janz and Rusty Rat on Janz boat More-on. Great guys...had a really nice day on the water! Boated 8 today...6 kings and 2 Steelhead. Nothing over 15lbs today. My 10 year old Justin joined us today and brought in 4 of the fish. We fished the bar and did most of the fish an flaser/fly's. Doing the same thing tomorrow and switching over to my boat Wed. or Thursday. With any luck we'll get into them better tomorrow. I'll give a better report In the next day or two.

[Jax]

Nice work on them silvers!!! Looking forward to the reports!

[dieselhp]

Glad to see you are back out on the water. Good luck!

[skipper19]

Good fishing Rod Bar has been good for everything lately. Lots of slimy mud poopers this year. Keep your wash down workin

Mark

[Fishtails]

I don't know what we are doing right, but we haven't caught a laker yet? I was sure I had one one the copper today...turned out to be a 6lb king.

Really nice day today (5/5) until the wind picked up around 11:30 out of the east and the fish shut down. I'm not at liberty to really give details cause I wasn't on my boat, but we lucked onto big fish today and boated 12....11 of them were over 15lbs with the two largest coming in at 19.15 and 19.12. They both weighed 21-22 on the boat scale, so we were surprised when they just missed the board. Jan and Scott landed those two fish. One noticeable observation I have made is there are very few dinks so far. Only one in two days of fishing. That light stocking last year is looking like it may have a major effect over the next couple years. Curious if others are noticing the same thing?

Back at it tomorrow

[chinook]

Rod, what I had noticed is that after 4 days ( Friday thru Monday) that the salmon division only had 6 total entries over 20#. I was starting to wonder if the fishing was that tough, but even at that with the number of boats off the bar esp. and lake wide one would expect more than that. Could be telling for things to come. Obviously these aren't from the stocking class of 08, but I always used the spring LOC as a barometer of the year's potential. I did see a few were added today however. Good to hear that Justin boated a few. Best of luck and keep us posted-Duane

[waterlogged]

Inn the 3 days we were there many mnay boats were catching exceedingly high numbers of what we might call dinks - 18" - 20" fish. On Saturday we threw a number back and at the launch we talked with a lot of boats that did the same. I think it has a lot to do with where you are fishing.

Clarke

[Tim Bromund]

Inn the 3 days we were there many mnay boats were catching exceedingly high numbers of what we might call dinks - 18" - 20" fish. On Saturday we threw a number back and at the launch we talked with a lot of boats that did the same. I think it has a lot to do with where you are fishing.

Clarke

Clarke, did you happen to notice if any of them were missing the adipose fin (small fleshy fin behind the dorsal). THose are what the fish marking trailer are clipping (as of last year, so stocked in 2008), so any dinks/shakers we catch from here on out that have the adipose missing are stocked and any that still have that fin should be wild/naturally reporduced fish.

Just curious.

Tim

[on the lam]

Tim, you may know this. I thought I read at one time that the salmon caught in the lake in the years (after) a poor return to the hatchery (07')? as well as other drought years, and limited numbers later stocked actually faired better in numbers AND size at maturity than on a normal stocking year??

[Fishtails]

Well, that is good to hear Clarke! Still only one lil guy for us. I'm guessing we will find the little ones during the Scotty and Pro Am

I did manage to get on the board today on Janz boat More On. We didn't have a stellar day, but managed to finish up with one that weighted 22.09 that currently holds 6th, but will drop like a rock I'm sure. Thankfully I landed it, cause I had dropped 4 in a row and was starting to take some heat The fish definitely were not where they were the day before!!

Time to take my boat out now and get ready for the King Of The Lake. I'll post more details after the events. Good luck to everyone out there!

[Rich D]

Way to go Rod, keep us posted, sounds like it is heating up out there nicely. Congrats on the big fish, tell Janz I said hi. See you in 10 days.

Rich

[choo-choo]

Rod (fishtails) Ihavn't been on the computer since before the derby started. I've been looking through this past weeks posts...Read about your 21/22 lb. kings on your scale,but did not make 20 on the certified scale.I had the same thing happen on thurs.,may 7,. Fishing east of the red can, landed a beauty,weighed right at 21.5 on our 2 scales,immediatelly ran 6 miles in to the river for official weigh in, but salmon did not make the board, their scale said 19.8. Bummed me out,ran 6 miles back out...wasted fuel and fishing time ! Learned a lesson, i will have a new,super accurate scale on my boat next time!!

[janz]

Strange you should mention that. Those fish weighed 21 and 22 lbs even on the boat. We did fish for a few more hours after landing them thinking the cold water would keep them nicely. When we got to the scales they weighed 19-8 and 19-15. Now when we got the 23 lb fish it weighed 23 even on the boat, we made one more pass over the waypoint and then pulled lines and headed in. Wasted no time hoisting the fish on the scale and it weighed 22-10 but when he punched a hole in the gill plate the pointer gave a hair of a space between the slash mark and the pointer and reduced the size to 22-9, still a nice fish. Strange how quickly fish can loose weight once out of the water. We had 2 really spectacular shows from the large kings where they thought they were sailfish, laying on their sides on the surface with their heads up and walking across the water for 50-60 ft at a time and that was with 100+ ft of line still out there. All I can say is if Rod had to land one fish that was the one.

JANZ

[choo-choo]

Janz.... great job on landing that 22.10 salmon!!! Think how close you guy's were to winning it all!!By the way ,how could they lower your salmons weight after they punched a hole in the gill ? Doesn't seem fair to me. Can a fish be weighed in at more than one official weigh station? I would have loved to see that king greyhounding across the surface like a sailfish...must have been awesome!

[Fishtails]

Like Jan mentioned, watching those two kings tail dance across the surface was truly spectacular. Especially the one that was 22.09.

That fish did weigh 22.10 on their scale. The guy punched a hole in it and then took the official weight. It weighed a hair under 22.10 and I told the guy he just clipped off that weight. He just chuckled and said "sorry guys.....I can't give it to you". Not that it matters, but it would have moved us up one spot cause there was already a fish weighed in at 22.09.

We didn't make a fuss though.....no point to it really. Had that fish been over 23 It may have gotten me a little fired up.

[Tall Tails]

Food for thought as my 23.00 sat in a cooler for 8hrs before being weighed as the bite was on and I was not leaving!!! Oh well!!!! Good showing to everyone!

Brian

[Tim Bromund]

Tim, you may know this. I thought I read at one time that the salmon caught in the lake in the years (after) a poor return to the hatchery (07')? as well as other drought years, and limited numbers later stocked actually faired better in numbers AND size at maturity than on a normal stocking year??

Sorry Pete, Missed this post.

From what I remember, I don't know that you can really say that they fared "better" in those years, but I belive it was kind of determined that stocking numbers had less of an impact on fishing quality than was originally thought. In the early 90's after NYS cut king stocking from 3.5+ million a year to 1.2 million, in a number of years, the hatchery returns of jacks were equal to or better than they were at the hight stocking levels. The DEC uses jack returns to the hatchery (males that mature as 1 year fish, 3-4 lb mature kings) as a gauge of how strong that particular year class of fish (how they survived to recruit to the fishery) might be. That seemed to indicate that higher stocking levels without the biomass to feed em, simply resulted in higher mortality.

It will be interesting to see how last spring's reduced stocking affects fishing quality, especially since the low water that caused the poor returns to the hatchery, also caused very low numbers of wild kings produced in the salmon river in the spring of 08.

Tim