Gill-T

There always seemed to be an endless supply of gear we use trolling to be found locally at local tackle shops, Dicks and even sometimes Cabelas. Lately I am having trouble finding some of the usual stuff. Anyone have a lead on... **Berkley Big Game green 30lb spools **Clear Walker Deeper Divers (did Dreamweaver buy them out?) ** 1/2" glow lure eye stickers ** Large flasher eyeball stickers

Ha! I called Steve this morning. He didn’t have anything I was looking for.

I thought you looked familiar. I will recognize your rig next time and say hi. I was the smaller of the two pink Tutu-wearing men at the event.

The amazing thing is the strong spoon bite. This group of fish for whatever reason has taken to spoons 10:1 over flasher presentations. They have been on a black pattern for me the last month.

Nice bunch of Kings to the East offshore in 400’-450’.

Cherokee boats were made for our type of fishing. If you can find one ( probably Michigan) !

IMO the biggest factor effecting size of steelhead is the lack of Emerald Shiners due to the effects of VHS and the loss of productivity in the epilimnion since the 80’s. We are seeing the effects on Erie now with walleye growth slowing to “Canadian shield lake levels”. It used to be during the 80’s and 90’s the blue zone offshore had emeralds visible on the surface year’round. Each spring you could count on emeralds thick in each port,river,stream or ditch. Now.....nothing. I saw plenty of trout snagged in tribs via snagging hooks in the eighties and steelhead were bigger. The charter fleet in Canada has had to adapt to steelhead or go out of business as their salmon numbers diminished over the decades. Two factors effecting size are age and food. If you believe the C&R numbers then it has to be the food.

What were your downtemps out there?

You need to find the tutorial on YouTube for setting up wire slide divers by Team Casey 1. I don’t like crimps and wire

That is what I am seeing in walleyes, perch and gobies.

I am a stud.

Great looking fish. I would be interested to know stomach contents of the one you kept. They look well fed.

For Gambler’s picture it looks like chronic feeding on Gobie-mouth or the laker tasted itself.

Awesome! This is the year to do it.

Just had to ask......where they caught on a two-face spoon or flasher??

I hook a bunch of kings on my big 6” spoons under the chin as they like to roll on those big baits. Somehow they get all three hooks buried. It usually involvolves quick surgery with a fillet knife to get the hooks coming out.

Steelhead are fat this year. They are just lacking age. We seem to have lost a very important piece of the food web with emerald shiner numbers being decimated after the bad winters of ‘13, ‘14. The foodweb has dropped lower in the water column as biologists had predicted after zebra mussel invasion. Current lake conditions favor alewife over shiners so either steelhead will have to learn to chase alewives deeper or subsist on bugs for the first two years of life and grow slow.

Thurs was an afternoon recon day. Greeted by a cold water roll over we went out to look at the fishfinder and check temps. There was a slick line with seagulls out at 130’ that had a slight temp break. There were some hooks on the break and at least presented an option for the Friday event. The large upwelling event was creating wicked currents and plankton blooms on the fishfinder. As is often the case during roll overs, the bigger class of kings get pulled by currents off the deeper basin depths onto the shore. On inshore structure, bait gets pinned into the thin band of warmer water along the shore presenting an opportunity similar to staging. The locals in-the-know were working inside on a north-south troll picking away at them as shallow as 60’. Not knowing the structure nuances like the armada inside, we set up on the break at 130’ ish and ran a more East-West game (less stressful) and picked away at fish during the morning. With the full moon we saw late lifting of kings over our water about 9 am. We hit a sick flurry for two hours then went mostly dead afterwards. After weighing our fish at 3:00, we decided to head offshore to find a more consistent bite for Saturday’s event. Flat glass water inshore can make for a tough bite, and when we got offshore we found weird rollers and active kings. Setting down at 225’ we trolled NE hitting small bait pods and kings around slick lines. The lake was changing quick and by the time we came in, the surface temp bumped 10 degrees. The sat event had us set up on the close break around 150’. We picked away at the kings that loved the cold water - jumping like steelhead and reaking havoc around the net. As the day progressed we found better fishing deeper, again around the slicks. We had a 17 lber to take to the scales for pictures knowing from radio chatter that you would need a 24 lber to win, so at the final count down I decided deploy the tactic of burying the net in the cuddy. Clearing lines one at a time, our wire diver takes off with 5 minutes of fishing time left. After a long battle we upgrade our fish only slightly. Our vet had a blast - most important. After hours was catching huge carp off the dock on corn, including a 20+ lber that took me 20 minutes to land. Always a great time to be had in Sodus. Best spoon by far was a black faced spoon with glow cup

Are you asking about the wounded warriors salmon slam fishing? There are some posts on the subject in the tournament section of LOU.

I own an ‘88 trophy. I like the blue stripe you added.

Thanks Nick for taking the time and putting this event on. Our vet enjoyed two days of dancing with kings.

Agree with Pappy plus we shot offshorre this evening and lit them up NE of port past 250’

No muddy water but frigid temps inside.

Nick, can I leave the $50 with Arney’s in an envelope?

I confirmed the same from a Boat that came in.