GAMBLER

Welcome back Mark!

Started off the morning I search of a derby laker. The goal was to find one over 18lbs. Set the boat down in 140' and started looking. After a short search, the fish finder lit up in 148. The rest of the day, we crushed the lakers but fell short of our 18lb laker minimum. The highlight of the day came after I rigged a ten color up pulling a chrome Luhr Jensen Dodger pulling a UV Chartreuse Dot Gambler rig. A 19.6lb King smashed the ten color down the chute! We had a bunch of lakers in the 15-16lb range. Most of the lakers were spitting up small 4" smelt.

Here is the photo of the 31 from their Facebook Page Billy.

I had one of the best perch season last fall. The perch fishing is not dead. There was a 31.5 lb King weighed in in the St. Catherine's Fish and Game club derby today. That tells me the lake is healthy.

I believe the state wants the lake trout more than you think. It is all about the all mighty dollar. Think about it, the state has to spend a ton of money to raise and stock kings. Lakers are raised by the Feds and the DEC does the stocking. They are not smart enough to figure out that Kings = money spent on sport fishing on Lake Ontario. Lake trout will not draw the amount of tourism dollars that the salmon fishery does. It is plain and simple. You take kings out of the equation, towns that thrive on the Lake and stream fishing will become ghost towns.

Fishing lake trout, I am seeing more and more lake trout spitting up smelt. The DEC says the smelt numbers are low but the smelt sightings are increasing for me. The other day, we had some good bait schools hugging bottom in 155-170'. The lakers that were pulled from the bottom there were spitting up 4" smelt. This was a trend we saw all last season.

Here is a jumbo Alewive from Lake O today

That takes the price down to $35,100.00 US dollars. Still a little steep but a nice rig.