Yankee Troller

Congrats to teams Legacy and Roll With It

  On 6/5/2025 at 2:04 PM, lachsforelle said:

Kinda related to the topic...do most agree that Cohos are better table fare than Kings?

 

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Fun Fact: I've never put anything that lived in water in my mouth, so I'm not a good source of info for this question.

  On 6/3/2025 at 5:05 PM, King Davy said:

Well Rick, Steve did make that decision. It had nothing to do with TU or wild fish. It’s all about aligning the management parameters they have in place for each region of the state. If you pay attention to DEC’s operating model they are striving to make regulations and management of a watershed as vanilla as possible. 
 

If the reason to not stock nearly 15k browns when the Private hatchery puts north of 10k fish in the same stream to align with their stocking program for every other LO stream for brown trout then they are aligning their management plan. 
 

I still don’t understand why an angler no matter how they fish cares if they fish for only stocked fish. The wild fish bite also and if you follow the groups like Friends of Irondequoit (which is not TU by the way) you’ll see plenty of pictures of full bodied nice fish. Instead of crying about anything and everything how about you all just go fish.

 

And stop the childish name calling. Whats that all about. As far as Atlantic Salmon every Great Lakes state is working on revitalization of Atlantic Salmon including NY. The DEC aren’t just fish farmers. They actually do a ton of science.

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What has the current process/program hurt? It gave you a wild population and a stocked population for everyone to enjoy. The old saying, "if it ain't broke don't fix it." No one here cares, or disagrees, that wild fish bite. I know your group is hung up on this biting theory, but no one cares. Great, they bite.

So where are they going to plant these fish moving forward. I think it's nice these fish started their life in a stream rather than getting dumped in the lake like the rest of them. It gave trib, bay, and lake anglers something different. Who knows, maybe it helped survival. Will i-Bay suffer now? There was a decent population in there. 

For the record, I'm not opposed to you guys getting a woody over a wild population of fish. I'm concerned about stopping the stocking part. You guys can chest bump each other and argue over wild, native, and stocked all you want. I want opportunities for all stakeholders ie. kids, non-elitist trib fisherman, bay fisherman, and lake fisherman.

This decision should have been made through the collective group of anglers on both sides of the fence of the committee Steve Hurst runs.

  On 6/2/2025 at 8:14 PM, King Davy said:

Last year DEC region 8 put in a great effort to study Irondequoit creek after years of reports of many wild fish present from Ellison park all the way to Fishers. So last summer they electro fished several locations up stream through Penfield. East Rochester, Pittsford and finally through Fishers and found many reaches with solid healthy populations of wild brown trout. In the higher reaches like fishers there were also rainbow steelhead trout.

 

This decision isn’t entirely due to finding wild trout. DEC doesn’t stock brown trout in any Lake Ontario tributary below an impassable barrier. Why? Because they’d have to count those fish against the allotment to Lake Ontario. 

They pulled the brown stocking for a summer fishery on the Salmon River four years for this reason and this decision is now completing the Lake Ontario stocking policy. 
 

However the private hatchery at Powder Mill park will continue stocking for the exact reason to allow families easy access to trout.

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Please explain why the need to change? There's a healthy trib fishery and it compliments the lake. Sounds elitist to me to protect a wild trout that was initially stocked there.

  On 6/2/2025 at 6:46 PM, SusanJames said:

I can't tell you how many kids I've witnessed catch their first trout at Irondequoit. Linear Park offers easy access and productive fishing. The perfect opportunity to introduce kids and adults to our sport. The Brown Trout program has been a "put and take" fishery and I doubt there is much if any reproduction occurring...certainly not at a level to impact the reproduction of naturals. 

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I was probably one of them. My father took my brother and I there all the time when we were kids.

Unbelievable

  On 5/28/2025 at 7:56 PM, David Podlesnik said:

Thanks Richard, always appreciate your candor and knowledge. I've delayed coming up this year do to the conditions, but will be up next week Lord willing and hope those Kings are ready, fat and furious. I see a 28# won the Spring derby in St. Catherine's. Thanks

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Good luck when you get out. Fingers crossed the Kings start committing mass violence to our spreads.

  On 5/28/2025 at 6:16 PM, David Podlesnik said:

I hear what your saying. And a robust Coho spawn is great. But I don't remember it being this disproportionate to the number of Kings. If the Kings are still out there it should be as good if not better than last year with some really big fish. Tight lines.

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That Salmon fishing we saw the last two years was another example of what naturals can do to the fishery. We saw those fish two seasons ago as 6-12lb fish (2yr old's), and last year as 3yr old's. 99% of our Salmon mature at 2 and 3 years old. Last year was it for that crop of fish we saw.

Now, as far as the poor King fishing this season it's early to judge. We've had an enormous amount of East winds and cool temps that followed a cold Winter. Let it play itself out.

  On 5/28/2025 at 2:24 PM, David Podlesnik said:

If it is natural coho reproduction then what tribes are contributing. And why has it never happened before. And why would the coho's be so successful and, at least it appears, not the kings.  They both spawn at the same time with both needing the dame conditions. And your observation of a lot of coho's and few Kings makes sense to me. If the Kings never show up this year then your hypothesis might have to be seriously considered.

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We had a Coho boom 5-6 years ago. The whole lake enjoyed it. Again, the DEC hasn't changed stocking numbers for decades on these. If anything, they fail to reach target numbers due to poor eye up in the hatchery.

From the data we have the tribs on the North shore and the Salmon River are our best tribs to support natural reproduction. After a 9yr tagging study we settled on 50% of the Kings caught are naturals. If we stock 1,000,000 Kings another 1,000,000 are naturally reproduced. Of those 1,000,000 naturals 500,000 come from north shore tribs. Of the other 500,000 naturals 250,000 come from the Salmon River.

  On 5/28/2025 at 1:30 PM, rolmops said:

This season though , these 30 +inch Atlantics are a very welcome catch.Even in this cold water, their acrobatics lighten up my day. I must admit though that they do not taste very different from the ones at Wegmans.

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Everyone will take what they get. However, Atlantics are not targetable. Coho are easily targetable. Chinook are targetable. Heck, every trout species is targetable. If you can't target a species it's not bringing in anglers to chase them. It's very easy. ROI on Atlantic's is the worst out of every species swimming in Lake Ontario. 

The DEC stocks X amount every year. The variable here is naturals. Clearly a bumper crop of natural Coho in the system. In a season with tough King fishing it is a welcomed fishery. I've been asking for this fishery for years, but all I ever hear is how expensive it is to raise Coho in the hatchery. The state and feds have no issues pissing away money on Atlantic programs that very few people ever benefit from though. 

I haven't had one denied if you got the black screen of death

I ran 2 10" HELIX's, 2 cannon downriggers, a fish hawk, and fm radio off the cranking battery while the kicker was running. You should be fine.

The right way to do it is to add a house battery (I couldn't do that becasue my main engine was a 2 stroke and there was an oil tank so no room for a 2nd battery). Blue Sea Systems sells an "Add a Battery" kit. Follow the directions and it's easy to install (make sure you use the appropriate sized wire). The relay will close and send a charge to the house battery (that will be running all your fishing equipment) when it senses a charge from the engines alternator. When it doesn't sense that charge it opens and your cranking battery doesn't get drawn down by those electronics. Any questions call me at Krenzer Marine, or drop a DM. 

  On 5/20/2025 at 2:51 AM, BRsnow said:

Any links to that wire? What backing/how much? Thanks

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AFW 30lb can be found here at FishUSA. I use the two reel method for figuring out backing. Spool on the wire and then fill reel with backing. Take a second reel and zero the counter. Reel on the backing and note the counter number once it's on the reel. Continue to reel on the 1000' of wire. On your empty reel use the data you got from the first to determine where to stop with the braid.

I run 1000' of AFW 30lb wire and use backing to fill the spool.

I would say for Salmon fishing 27lb is the most common size. We use FishUSA Stealthcore and have had great luck with its durability. Walleye guys seem to prefer the 18lb.

Thanks guys, It's awesome to see since we've been fishing this derby since the ESLO days. I wish I wasn't at work when my brother caught it, but it's great to see him and good buddy Justin take home the win.

  On 5/11/2025 at 12:47 PM, GAMBLER said:

Thanks!  Too many here need to drop the political BS.  I have said it once and I will say it again, LOU isn’t the place for this political banter BS.  We have an issue at hand that affects us all and need to come together to fight this issue.  

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I agreed 110%

  On 5/9/2025 at 5:23 PM, Gill-T said:

Because it is an absolute waste of time voting on unimportant dribble as changing the name of a body of water for political gains when there are REAL problems that our representatives should be working on. 

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100% agree

The problem is we've been spoiled for many years with warmer Winters that progressed the season. We also had an enormous wild crop the last few years that aged out at 3 last season.

I grew up fishing the bar in May. I remember years having to go over the boarder to get Salmon the first week'ish of May. We had East winds last weekend, which will blew the water West. We had East winds the weekend before, and we had East winds this week. Our friends on the other side of the boarder are having a field day with the Salmon the last few days.

East winds blow water West, but bubbles can also break off and go North. If you can find one of those bubbles the top 40' can be dumb over deep water.

  On 5/9/2025 at 10:41 AM, GAMBLER said:

I switched to braid last season and will never turn back.  I got a lot more rigger hits than the past using wire.  Fleas were not an issue.  My retro ease on the cable took 99% of them off the line before they got to the boom end,  

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Everyone had a lot more hits last season