GAMBLER

It’s missing or weak year classes with the browns. When the DEC dumped browns on Edgemere Drive two years ago by my work, the cormorants had days of fun picking off the browns that were stocked. The spring was goofy and the browns were not around. We have seen springs like this before. Rochester Sportfishing put a 23.05lb brown in the boat for his clients during the summer LOC but they were not in the derby. They also put a 18.5 on the deck the week before the derby. Fishing pressure and issues with stocking (cormorants) is a huge issue with the browns. If you spend a lot of time fishing browns in the summer, you will see their preferred area they summer in does not have a lack of bait all season. They also eat more than just alewife and there isn’t a shortage of gobies for them to eat. Steelhead size seemed up this year from the ones we caught. The LOC leaderboard for steelhead is not a good size indicator when the king bite is amazing inside of 200’ and has been all season. Why would a captain or rec guy run over a great king bite to burn way more fuel to chase fish offshore? If you don’t fish where steelhead spend most of their summer, you are not going to find many big ones. This is also a reason for the brown board being lean. East end boats (Sodus and Oswego) usually lean on browns when king fishing is slow. They have had phenomenal king fishing all season and are not fishing them. When king fishing is hot, captains leave browns, steelhead and lakers alone. 2021 Summer loc brown division had 3 browns over 19 in the top and the bottom was 15 and change…..

Browns are still big in Lake Ontario. Lacking year classes due to cormorant predation are the reason for lack of big browns around.

If that was the case, they would still return to the hatchery.

The DEC has a good grasp on what year classes return to the hatchery. They know fish are spawning younger than the past. Coded wire tags have been used for decades on Lake Ontario by the DEC.

That’s a R&R

There have been some 30+ lb kings caught on the North shore in the GOSD and the Silver Salmon derbies but not many compered to 10 years ago. They will start to migrate to the salmon river soon and some will show up on the South shore and East end of the lake before the season is over.

This is what I found on the web. There are two primary strains of Chinook salmon, originating from the West Coast of the United States...the Tule (too-lee) and the URB (upper river bright). The Tule are the strain that populates the Great Lakes, and is known for its large size and fighting prowess as a game fish. The Tule strain is genetically pre-disposed to “run” in late summer/early fall, while the URB is a late fall run.

In the past state of the lake meetings, they were against it. They blame the bait biomass on the reason and not genetics. Replacing the current genetic strains we have in Lake Ontario totally would not be a good idea since they have adapted to naturally reproduce. Thats not what I'm asking for. Blend new genetics with some (not all) of our Lake Ontario fish and see if we can get the size back.. If they can do this, I would love to see some Kenia River Strain kings!

If you look at the GOSD tournament, the mature kings are way smaller than years past. You used to never see a king under 30lbs on the board. Not there are only a couple over 30lbs.

For years the DEC lake managers have preached that the kings size is falling due to lack if bait in the lake. The past three years, the bait hatches have been way up (record three years ago follow by an ok hatch filled by another great hatch). King size is still down. I’m not buying their theory anymore. Genetics are more than likely the culprit. Is it time to sprinkle some new genetics in to see if we can get the world class salmon fishery we have to pump out 40’s again? I’m not saying totally bring in new genetics. Thoughts?

Will do! Remind me to pack them!

It was spent. He didn’t revive so he went in the box. When I cut him up, he had bruising on his left side.

Dark and dirty weekend! 🤣

TTT

You must have heard about the weekend at the marina? 🤣

If you troll salmon, you should know what others could possibly be running. We are not talking about someone that is just a pleasure boater. There is also NO reason to run that close to somebody. It’s a huge lake and there were not many boats out there!

It was a brand new tracker. I knew it wasn’t yours.

I run the Daiwa Great Lakes roller rods. I have been running roller rods for divers for years. One tip that is important when running wire diver rods is reel position. Do not have your reel facing up. Make sure the top of the reel is facing the front of the boat keeping the wire on the rollers and not off the roller on the roller frames. If you do not run them in the right position, you can be cut off by a king on the hit. If you look at the photo I provided, this is the proper position a roller rod reel should be in (red arrow is pointing at the rod).

Not the same boat. This was out of Sandy. I watched it happen and couldn’t believe it. I don’t understand why people want to fish that close to one another to begin with. Rules of the road, common sense and some decency need to be used!

🤦🏻‍♂️

Friday: We we’re greeted Friday morning with sloppy conditions and a grind of a day. We fished West of port in 50-200’ of water finding the best bite in 115-120. Kings, browns and lakers hit the deck all day with nothing over 16lbs. It was mostly a spoon bite for us. NBK and A.S.S Dill Pickle stingrays were our two best producers. Saturday: we started the morning in 115-120 East of Sandy. We pounded the same water all day and put a decent box together consisting of three kings and a laker. Atommik meat rigs and Familiar Bite cutbait put all four of our fish in our box that we weighed in. At weigh in, we landed in 10th place and took big laker of the tournament. Congrats to Team Screaming Reels on their dominant win and all the other teams that cashed a check! Sunday: Keith and I got the boys out mid morning for a derby run. We decided to fish lakers for the first time this summer. I set the boat down in 115 and we put a beat down on lakers for 4 hours. At 10:30, we tripled up and Brayden had a big laker on. The fish took 200’ of line on the first run. After a great battle, I slid the net under a 21.06 laker (Brayden’s new PB) and it puts him in 6th place in the LOC, and top youth lake trout.