Pete Collin

These are really exciting reports!

That's awesome Doug!

Boy, it looks like jigging chinooks is becoming a "thing!"

Hello All, It was Sunday, the marine forecast was ideal, and I had no further family obligations. No way was I going to do anything but fish Ontario! My buddy Steve joined me for some laker jigging. It feels like now is the time to really put in an efffort, because I feel comfortable and familiar with my boat's electronic equipment. We head straight to the hot waypoint, then had to search a little for the correct depth. Saw some blips, and away we go. You try to keep things simple if you can. I have a spot lock trolling motor, but in the early morning the wind was at a rare, ideal speed and direction. One drift bag sent us along the right contour for a good hour, so no fussing with the electric motor, and we could conserve battery power for later. We got several right away, first average sized ones, then a real dandy that I guessed at 33 inches. They were biting, but not hitting solid. Many bumps and seconds-ons. I'm used to that. Lakers spend a lot of time being only half-hearted about biting jigs. So we used a little strategy. Having a spot-lock trolling motor is great for virtually anchoring you in place. But the trade off is that you don't cover water. So we figured we could begin a drift at the top of the run, without a drift bag, and have my finger on the spot-lock button. As soon as a blip appears on the graph, lock us in position, and begin jigging. Listless fish are hard to catch when you are wind drifting, because you may only be showing them your lure for a few seconds. Tease it in their face forever, they will either bite or swim away. We caught a number of lakers this way that I'm sure we wouldn't have caught without the technology, including a nice 30 incher. I figured out that if the wind blew us deep or shallow, I could use the main motor to nudge us to the corrrect depth, leaving the electric motor in the water. That saved both battery and my back from lifting and dropping the Minn Kota. It worked pretty well up until 1:00 or so when they stopped biting to the point where they swam away from our jigs and spoons. A couple of the day's highlights were that, close to the boat, we got to watch a salmon jump again and again, trying to dislodge a lamprey. I also, for maybe the 4th time in my life, hooked a salmon on a jig! It was a deliberate thing - we saw blips up high that clearly weren't lake trout. I saw both the fish and my jigging spoon on the screen, so could stop it at the fish's level and jiggle it. He bit, and gave me the signature quick-figure-eights that let you know you are latched on to an angry slab of silver. Those first few seconds are hard to keep tight, and alas, several seconds of fight was all I got! I just read about Isaac's success jigging salmon, so I will have to give them more effort from now on. So jigging is a finesse thing, which is part off what makes it fun. Steve has had luck with me before, but Sunday he only landed 2 fish to my 8. It's hard to judge how much coaching a seasoned fisherman will welcome, but I tried to watch him and offer advice that would help him score. But overall, they were a bit listless. Our catches were lightly hooked and our shakeoffs were too frequent. But 10 fish with 2 over 30 inches, plus a bite from a salmon should be a great day in anybody's book!

Holy cow are they stacked in there!

Hello All, I lost one of my inline planers this spring. Went online to find a replacement would cost about $40 delivered. Not worth it! There is nothing to them! So a little time in the shop, and I have a perfectly functional mirror of an original. Even used a CNC to carve a wooden mold for that slidey lead weight for the bottom. You don't need a CNC to make the form, but I am learning how to run CNC machines so it came in handy. On its test flight, I put it in the water and thought, "Oh man! It's floating funny! What did I do wrong?" The problem was that a fish bit right away! The new board helped me get a 10 fish day on Lake Ontario. The highlight was when I cranked in my lines at quitting time, one lure was being followed by a salmon! Maybe I should fabricate a mast and reels for a proper big setup. Have a good and safe season everyone!

Les, was that an American eel that you caught? I once tasted eel that a chum got ice fishing. They actually are delicious, and eel sushi is proof. A finger lakes guide once cooked lamprey and said it tasted surprisingly good.

Have I ever seen anything special while fishing? Gotta choose only one or two stories.... Some of them I have already written about on this forum. There was the time I was flyfishing Sandy Creek. Some days you drive from bridge to bridge and find all of the good spots too crowded to join in. It looked too mobbed to bother getting out of the car. But a thunderstorm was looming, the purple/black clouds and advancing thunder claps sounded pretty ominous. The whole batch of fishermen skedaddled once the maelstrom hit, soaking rain coming in sideways. In just a few minutes of slammed car doors and starting engines, I was the only guy parked by the bridge. I could see wakes and splashes in the run upstream. It was obvious there was a ton of migrating fish before me. So I ignored the lightning that seemed way too close for comfort, and waded into casting range. It's a phenomenon that an approaching storm front will send fish into a frenzy, seen it a hundred times. Can't imagine why those brown trout weren't terrified by the constant bright flashes and thunder that must have rumbled the stones beneath them. Instead, they bit on any fly I could drift into their roiling mass. It was amazing. I caught and caught and caught spawning browns, some of them pretty big. The storm was so intense that there must have been some actual danger standing up to my knees in water waving a stick in the air. But I thought the reward was worth it, I could die with a smile on my face! I thought about that scene from Fantasia where The Sorcerer's Apprentice was standing on a craggy mountain top, directing lightning bolts at his will. I felt that way except each jolt came from a fish. That scene played out right up to sundown. I was actually sad when it faded to darkness, that the most intense session of stream fishing had come to a close. At sunrise the next morning, everything changed. The storm brought in a cold front that shut the fish down, they couldn't be budged. But what a time, having mother nature herself sweep a loaded stream clean of human competition, and usher in a cosmic bite just for me.

Where are you located?

Closed

Hello. I am on the market for a 7 foot medium action spinning rod. Preferably one with an IM6 blank, a cork handle and many guides. I'll even take a blank if you have one.

Wyoming County, Letchworth Park area

That's 4 hours away from me! Too bad.

where do you live?

Where do you live?

I'm on the market for replacement rigger weights. I will even buy some releases if you have them.

Cool article. It has been years since I caught a fish and did not know what it was.

Looked it up. You may be right. Didn't know the great lakes had them.

We were anchored off the mouth of Oak Orchard yesterday evening. Slow bite but we managed a couple nice male browns. The weird thing is that we kept seeing what we thought were breaching trout and salmon, but after snagging several, discovered that they were these big 2+ pound herring! Could these possibly be alewives? They had sawlike bellies the way alewives do. No adipose fin, so they weren't whitefish like I initially thought. I know seagoing alewives can get pretty big, but these things were mutants! The first one we brought in was snagged in the tail. It looked oval as Steve cranked it in, so he thought at first he snagged a turtle. We started calling them turtle fish. There must have been a jillion down there, becasue we could feel our spoons scraping their sides from time to time. At first they were sort of interesting, then got a bit annoying because the browns wouldn't bite, finally we relocated to try to get away from them. The turtle fish gave us something to talk about until we finally hooked some browns!

Sort of analogous to hunting from horseback!

I'm curious how the drift speed of a jet ski would compare to that of a boat, especially with a sock behind you. On the one hand, there is less crafft above the surface to catch with wind, but way less inertia for the wind to overcome. I used to use a handheld gps to mark my hotspots, on the new boat it's all up on the chart screen. Once you locate a hotspot, it is good to quickly motor back upwind once you pass out of them. The lakers tend to follow a contour. Looking back, I bet my most successful days were ones where luck had the wind blowing me right down the pipes of where they were lying. When the wind is blowing at a right angle to shore, you often drift out of a school within a matter of minutes. So you spend a lot of the day picking up and moving.