Reelin for a cure event today out of olcott with the lake rolled over and East wind, I went with tried and true (the aforementioned spoon that shall remain mostly nameless) on 6 out of 7 rods I ran. Never took them off.
If you want to avoid other species as "bycatch", I would suggest December offshore in the top 40'. The second place would be July off the drop on the Niagara bar with nets set at the thermocline. The third would be near the elbow in the fence on the canadian line offshore. This third location would work in September with nets set at the thermocline. If you want numbers, at night year 1 salmon will line up nose to tail at 50' off the Niagara Bar. Weird phenomenon with the 50' depth but it may represent the depth they sleep and are neutrally buoyant in their inactivity. The Huron tagging study by Bergstedt also spoke about kings sleeping at 50'.
You can only count what you catch. Yes there are suspended alewives off the bottom during winter that will never be caught. The methodology of coming up with a “perfect” bait population number is impossible. Here is a screen shot aboard the Kaho during trawling. They have their fishfinder set in meters not feet for depth reference.
You think anyone in fisheries will allow stocking of an invasive? Keep in mind the measurements of alewives is in the BILLIONS!!! We are not at risk for losing our bait like Huron because Ontario is a green cesspool at the end of the plumbing. The sky is not falling. Having alewives take a temporary dip is not a bad thing because it allows for competing species to rebound such as emerald shiners or walleyes.
Still using same set up with the same knots tied this spring. Yesterday someone in our group fought a 20 lb king that was hooked in a lateral fin. The battle lasted 25 minutes. Still going strong.
If it helps we had flasher/ flys on two riggers to suck them in at 72’ and 82’, two mag slide divers with spoons out 180’-225’ out and a 200’ weighted steel with 1 ounce additional, carrying a spoon. We were just West of the power plant with line of fish we were on. Only hits were into down current trolling East.
Tough start to the morning. I had some nubes that needed to fish early to be home by 1:00 so despite my reservations about the lake not being settled we headed out at about 6:30 am. LOTS of boats launching today for a non-derby day! Set down in 100’ and went into search mode heading North. Hit tons of weed mats in the 200’s but never marked anything until we hit 400’. We set an East troll from 400’-430’ taking 5 shakers, three female majors (lost two more), a steelhead and a tagged unicorn. The Atlantic was undersized and may have been dragged awhile so I didn’t want to dink around trying to read the tag numbers so I ripped the tag out, released the fish quickly and gave the tag to the DEC survey people to do follow up in port. NOAA wave report was not even close! Got beat up pretty good on ride in. Fish have started to darken a little more noticeably.