GAMBLER

You are welcome and good luck!

Lakers migrate East in late May leaving very few in the Olcott area. There is a good population on the bar at this time of the year. 120' seems to be the most consistent depth for me off of Sandy but I'm not sure about the bar area. Find water colder than 45 degrees on the bottom. The bigger fish will be in water from 39-45 degrees when they are on the bottom. If you fish warmer than 45 degrees, you will get lakers but mostly small ones.

The better one West of Rochester!

Thanks Mike. Sandy offers some of the best waters for Lakers and Browns on the entire lake. It is such a great but underrated port! We capitalize on the bite when the conditions are perfect for those two species and it has worked well for us! Its tough to give up a couple trips in the short season for kings but we get over it! I was a little worried he wouldn't like fishing for a while. He showed way more interest in hunting. The last two years, he has really started to show way more interest in the lake trolling. Now that he is LOC eligible, his interest is rising. He placed 3rd in the Orleans County Rotary derby lake trout division the past two years. He really gets a kick out of getting paid to fish!

Saturday he reeled in 21 of the browns we boated. This morning he reeled in a ton of lakers. The kid is a machine! SSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!!!! 19.13 and 16.05.

They only work on Kings Billy. Big kings!

When you use Gambler Rigs, it's that easy!

Had a game plan of fishing lakers for a couple hours for the LOC. After a late night at work, we left the dock at 6:45 and headed to the laker grounds. We were met with flat seas and disgusting heat! The laker bite was great for the 2.5 hours we fished. Gambler Rigs behind Death Traps and Hammerhead cowbells put fish in the boat all morning. We plucked lakers from 100' -130 right on the bottom. My usual weigh points were dry due to heavy currents and we found the bigger lakers on the flats not the structure. At the end of the morning, we put two fish on the LOC leaderboard.

The biggest food source in the St. Lawrence is more than likely the goby now. Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United mobile app

White crushed UV great mid day flasher. Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United mobile app

I would say sturgeon. The 34lb laker we caught on Lake O we didn't have to chase. Once we got it unglued from the bottom, it made a lazy 200' run and then came in easy.

Check out the Key lime taped meat head. That color is sick!

The GOSD derby in Canada has a $300 family pass and people pay it. Although, their payouts are way better than the LOC! A boat pass would have to be limited to so many people and they would have to have their names at the time the boat was registered or less people registering for the derby. I have a lot of different guys fish my boat over the season. If I could buy a boat pass, a lot less people would have to spend the money to sign up to fish on my boat. The division changes were mostly to add a walleye division (spring and summer Steelhead were removed and replaced with walleye). The laker division was taken out because a FEW guys were in Daves ear complaining about lakers and wanting more money in the salmon division. ( look back in the forum and you will find a poll showing roughly %90 were against the changes taking the laker division out). They didn't eliminate that divisions to keep the payout / entry fee balance. The eliminated divisions to appease a few and try to draw more people. I know a lot more people that do not fish the LOC because of the divisional changes in the Fall and now the summer derbies.

The point of the Derby is to put money in Dave Chilson's pocket. If it was to promote the fishery, you would not cut the Steelhead out of the Spring and Summer and the Lake Trout out of the Fall derby! We have world class fisheries for Kings, Browns, Steelhead and lake trout and they are not promoted equally at all!

I think we will see a steelhead division back in the 2021 Summer derby. This one was a complete flop. 2 weekends in with good weather and ZERO walleye weighed in! As for the lie detector test for BS, it should be used but it has not been used in the past when it should have!

I have seen a couple boats wash up on shore in the news on Lake O over the years on the news. I wouldn't want the death of someone that was fishing my derby on my mind. There is enough BS that goes on every year with tournaments and derbies every year on Lake O. Without a witness, I feel the integrity would go down the drain. The weigh station personnel at some of the weigh stations are clueless. One in particular, is a joke, We were weighing in a laker for the Orleans County derby (this place is also a LOC weigh station) and we had a 14lb coho in the box. We weighed the laker and the weighmaster asked us if we wanted to weigh in our big steelhead. Stuff like this happens all the time.

Running the "go to" stuff seems to change year to year. What was hot last year may not buy many bites this year. I have found changing up lures when the bite slows, changing presentations, not getting hung up on what worked last year, and changing speeds helped during slow times. I have found on somedays too many flashers can be a bad thing when the bite slows. Take some out of your spread and see if it changes things. Two years ago during the Sandy Creek Shootout, I was watching the fish streak into the rigger spread and not commit. I pulled the flashers out of the spread and we started firing rods like crazy. We ended up upgrading 3 kings in our box in the last hour and a half after I pulled the flashers. Also pay attention to the graph. Later in the day, we find more kings deep and out of temp.

Solo you cant have a witness and its unsafe to fish on the big lake alone.

You can sign up prior to 7am the day you fish. It can be done on any smart phone from the lake!