Gator

What a turnout last night! The L. Ontario fishing community really showed up, and Lures Restaurant came through big, as well,. I wasn't involved in any way, but I can appreciate the amount of work it takes to hold an event like this, and my hat is off to Jon, Tim and Brian for doing it right. The amount of bucket raffles was insane, Jon and Tim channeled Tom Cruise behind the bar, and Brian was hoarse by the end of the raffles from calling out numbers. And most importantly, everybody came together to support one of our brothers in a tough place.

Ooohhhh I want the self-care basket. I love to take care of myself! See ya there, buddy!

As many of you may be aware, one of our brothers Brian Gambell recently found out that his nephew Jeremy had been diagnosed with cancer at the young age of 24. Brian has been instrumental in helping to raise funds for Jeremy during this tough time, and he's being joined by friends and LOU fishermen Jon Novitsky and Tim Skrip who will be guest bartending at Lures Restaurant tonight from 5-8 pm, located at Bald Eagle Marina near Kendall. All tips will go toward Jeremy and there will be a variety of other fundraising activities occurring such as raffles over the course of the evening. Please join us and many members of the LOU community to support this worthy cause. Meliora!

Hell, yeah, I'm in brother!

Friday looked good, but my fishing partner for that day had a last minute thing, so I put up trail cameras instead and spent a few hours running the forest clearing saw in preparation for bow season. Saturday we decided to head offshore, based on the week's crazy fluctuations in water temperature and the fact that the inside water went from ice cold to 70 degrees top-to-bottom literally overnight. Unfortunately, with the south wind it got a bit lumpy running out so I had mercy on the crew and we started our troll at the 27 line, well inside where I wanted to be. That was a mistake. It was not the stable water I wanted to find. We did run into a bunch of steelhead and smaller kings, including a couple chromers in the 10+ plus range, but it just wasn't consistent. Much like the lake itself, which went from relatively flat to 3' and back to flat. I got excited at one point when we found a dramatic temperature break of over 10 degrees, on the surface as well as down, but the wind had picked up which made trolling into them to get back to the break a sloppy affair. When the lake flattened out, we could see a barbed wire fence set up defining the break, but the fish didn't seem oriented to it like they'd been earlier, or maybe it was moving so much or the current was impossible to set up on effectively...I don't know. We struggled trying to figure it out for a couple hours then headed south, where we had a king rip a wire diver, the only one of the day. Insult on top of injury, we didn't land it. But it was interesting how the warm water had pushed in so hard from the west, displacing a bolus of cold water way offshore, and the barbed wire fence was cool to see. - about fifty yards of choppy water on an otherwise flat lake. We rolled the dice and came up snake eyes. Great day to be fishing regardless. Sunday was spent scaping the bottom on the inside with meat, looking for one big pink-bellied king. And that was what we found. One king. Just not quite big enough. There were no skippies, no browns, no steelhead, nothing else. We found 54 degree water 120' down over 140'. We heard that the bite the day before at the Canadian border was good, but we didn't have the time to run that far, unfortunately. What a difference a week makes. Ultimately, this season consisted for us at least of a good four week period from mid July to mid August, with the alewife die off just FUBAR for most of May and June and now the dreaded August turnover sending the matures hightailing it east to stage and spawn. We will get out one more weekend, weather permitting, but that's going to be it this year for Nothing But Net. Meliora!

Let me perform a meta-analysis and identify impactful factors to derive a pooled estimate of sample effects for defining the efficacy of interventions and guiding decision-making, LOL.

@GAMBLER @whaler1 @HB2 Which came first, the chicken or the egg lol? Y'all are saying the same thing. There's fish somewhere, so that's where the fishermen congregate, so that's where most of the fish are weighed in, so you can track fishermen using fish...or is it fish using fishermen? And is it perception or reality that dictates the seasonal migration of fishermen? Oh, my head hurts. Meliora!

Can I rely on you and @Silver Fox to eliminate the unproductive water for me lol?

Sure. Brown trout are typically found closer to shore than other salmonids, and our target inside depth is where 61 degree water (precisely) intersects with the bottom. We will then try to fish from there +10 fow. For example, if the bottom is 60 degrees in 45 feet, then we'd target 45-55 foot depths fishing 40 feet down or so. Simple rule of thumb that works every time, 70% of the time lol

Scotty and I fished together last weekend and ran old school 1980s style dodgers! I could almost imagine him with big hair and sporting a Metallica tee... It caught a fish, too.

It looks like one of the guys off the board here won the raffle. Congratulations, Pappy! You will love the rod, guaranteed. Brian has done a heck of a job organizing these raffles and has managed to sell out every one of them. Kudos to him for stepping up!

For years, we pulled meat exclusively during the Shootout because it always seemed to trigger the bigger fish. With an "n" of one (me), I'm convinced something has changed. But I do think that it's important to run what you're confident in, and to have your spread dialed in so that it all works in synergy.

Friday I had the pleasure of taking a buddy's 9 yr old grandson out for his first trip on Lady O, and she didn't disappoint. He fought several matures on the wire and didn't lose a single fish! Due to the 2' rollers leftover from Thursday's NE blow, we set up shallow and trolled with them for most of the morning, between 60-100 fow. It was a decent pick of skippies, coho, and matures. With one last rod in the water, we took a decent hit, but then noticed that this sailboat which had been approaching from the West for miles was bearing down on us under power, I'm not kidding when I tell you that he passed within 15 feet of us, despite my best attempt to veer away. PigPen was right outside of us and thought that we'd gotten hit!! When I politely told the guy that he was too close and that he was the give way vessel since he was approaching us from behind, he told me that we were on his line and to "F-off". Classy. I restrained myself from responding given the kid on board. Saturday was a perfect weather day, but we rotted in that same inside water for an hour before deciding to push off. After motoring for 20 minutes or so, we set up at the 30 line right on top of them. My guys were a little timid on the rod and we went 1 for 7 on matures, but landed a bunch of quality coho and steelhead. The 80' rigger running an orange crush warrior XL spoon was once again the superstar, with 150 wire divers taking shots on various standard size spoons in combinations of black and green lol. Interestingly, neither the real nor fake meat got hit and we retired it quickly. Also interesting, we were taking steelhead and coho on the riggers going in one direction, then salmon on the divers in the other direction, without fail. Our down speed was identical and there was less current than I've seen lately. I couldn't explain why. Sunday was limited by time and pending weather (which was eventually a non-issue, as the rain petered out and the thunder never materialized). We stayed inside to the East and caught mainly skippies with a few larger fish including a just-under Atlantic, and we lost one ripper due to a hook that broke at the bend. I've been hearing tales of some bad metal in the mix over the last year both on terminal tackle and spoons. Temps were higher than the previous days, with the browns exactly where you'd expect them to be near where 60 degrees hit the bottom and the other fish scattered through a fairly wide comfort zone from 40-70 down.

This is a great guy who's having a rough time of it, and it's fantastic to see the community rally. Brian will have a description of the rod on Facebook, but in short it's a high end NFC blank built as a medium light spinning rod with a carbon grip, perfect for swimbaits and top water. Frankly, I built it identical to my own personal favorite rod that I fish several times a week out of my kayak. I tried to get a spot for Legacy's raffle and got shut out, so if you're interested, get in early.

I started the long weekend on Friday with Isaac jigging kings (thanks, brother!). We set up on a tough screen. and despite giving it our best shot for a couple hours only managed one laker. It's been a while since I wore the "black cat hat" lol. But it was good to finally get out together after communicating for literally years online. My plan for Saturday was to run offshore and try to repeat last weekend, but based on a tip from Brian at the dock ("you're crazy if you run past 140 feet"}, we ran to the Nose and set up in 140' trolling East. Unlike what we normally see this time of year, the current was pushing hard to the East, albeit less so than Friday, and we needed to chug to keep down speed at 2.3-2.5 mph. We started poking a few fish immediately, and when we turned back West all he$$ broke loose...I couldn't keep four rods in the water. The break was down 40-50 feet, the fish came mostly on riggers running Warrior XL spoons, either off the clip or on cheaters pinned 10' up, and we had a smackdown on 8-12 lb coho with another 4 for 6 on mature kings topping out around 24 lbs. We quit at 10 am having gone 20 for ?? on hits. On Sunday I was joined by Reel Doc (Greg) and Silver Fox. We hoped to find the same bite we'd had Saturday, only to be greeted by warmer water and a current that had switched 180 degrees from the day before. It's insane how quickly things change this time of year. Anyway, we fished essentially the same water and ground out some bites, going 2 for 4 on matures and boating lots of skippies, but no coho unfortunately. After a couple hours and a rapidly dwindling screen, we decided to take a death troll North. We ended over 400' with only one additional rip that "let go". Temperatures got much colder as we went out, but we never found a good screen. The highlight was probably that one of the kings came on an old school 1980's dodger that Scotty brought on board, which also took another shot. Next time we go out, we're wearing big hair wigs, listening to death metal, and running a straight up dodger spread!

So far as I can see, the bill hasn't been delivered to her desk yet. Once it's delivered, she has 30 days to sign it or the result is a "pocket veto", which can't be overturned by the legislature. That tactic has been used extremely infrequently though, and only three times that I can tell by Hochul. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A8330/amendment/A