rswanson330

We rented a camper in Catfish Creek for the week of April 18-25. We kind of picked the wrong week. First time out was Monday morning, and it was a beautiful day. That was the season shakedown, and was not without incident. (If you decide to swap from wire to braid on your downrigger, do NOT use Cannon terminal hardware to secure the ball... It slips). We fished west of the plant in 8-20' Monday morning with only a 16" fall fish to show for it. Then we tried dropping down for lakers and lost a ball. Not cool. So, with my buddy forgetting the lunch meat anyway, we back to Catfish and took a ride to town and picked up a new ball, then headed back out. We lost a nice laker at the boat in 180' off the plant. That seems to be where they are now, we tried from 140, but everybody else was out at about 180 too. My excuse for losing the fish is that I had re-webbed my net with rubber netting. Its only half as deep as the original nylon and drags a lot more, the fish was in it and jumped back out again. And for reasons I don't quite understand, it decided to throw the hook and go back to the bottom of the lake. I'll stick with nylon netting for bigger fish, rubber is great for streams but (in my opinion) sucks for trolling bigger fish. The rest of the week sucked. Tuesday morning we went out for browns as the wind and lake were picking up. It was difficult keeping the boards working in my 19' V-hull, the wind would catch the bow and the next thing you know one board is just sitting there and the other one skitting across the waves. We started the day headed east but were moving too quickly. Realizing that it was going to be a rough ride back we turned around and slowly headed to the pocket behind the point just east of the plant. In there we were able to manage the boat , but there was a lot of junk in the water that fouled the hooks. We packed it in at 11:30, and just BARELY made it in thru the washing machine in the mouth of the channel to Catfish. Everything is low and we had to keep our engine up... Navigation was quite challenging. After that we never got out again. We waited it out because it was supposed to lay down for Saturday, but when we went to Mexico Point to take a look around 9:00 Saturday morning it was still sketchy and the forecast was changing for the worse, so we pulled stakes and headed home. I've had good years, I've had bad years... But this year was an all time low. C'est la vie.

That's good news, We're up for a week. If we didn't catch fish, it wouldn't be the first time. Re: Lakers, How deep are you fishing? For example "150-190 west of the plant", I'm assuming that's 150-190 feet of water. How deep do you run your lures in 150-190 feet of water? Or do you just futz with them until you flash or catch a fish?

My buddy and I are coming up next week, we'll be fishing out of Catfish Creek. We'll play lakers if the browns don't want to cooperate. Please post any helpful information. Anybody doing any catching?

Full size boards off a planer mast.

Thanks for the tips; Re: FishUSA and The Okuma Cold Water 153D, they're $5 cheaper than that with free shipping from Amazon ($87.60). I keep vacillating between the SeaLine SG-3B and the Okuma Cold Water 153D reels. And 15# fluoro leader for springtime browns? I feel that's high, but I also have fish break off at the net with the 8#... And those fish are usually not the cookie-cutter 3-pounders. Anybody else have a thought on Spring Brown Leaders?

And which reels do you like? I'm sure this has been covered a million times, But I'm having a difficult time finding any current posts. I've always run 6-8# fluorocarbon with a 6# fluorocarbon leader behind a ball bearing barrel swivel for early brown trout. I fish behind planer boards on Lake Ontario (Pulaski/Mexico/Oswego area) in April. I only get up once every few years, now that I'm getting closer to my golden years I try to get up every April. I'm going to replace my brown trout reels this year, I've been using Abu Garcia bait cast reels that I bought used from an fellow in Florida 20 years ago. I'm leaning towards replacing them with Daiwa SeaLine Line Counters, I want to stay in the $100 range. I have SeaLines spooled with 14# fluoro in case the kings are in, I swap the reels if the need arises. Then I'll drop down 40' and 80' with downriggers. OK, enough rambling. Is anybody using braid on their planer boards? What about braid on their downrigger rods? I know the difference is stretch vs no stretch, I fish braid exclusively in Long Island Sound (my home water). But this trout/salmon thing is totally different. I think the stretch of mono might be a good thing. And its a lot cheaper; I'm spooling four reels (eight if I do the salmon reels as well). And, while we're at it, does anybody have a recommendation for a light line counter reel? (These reels will be specifically for browns, I have the other reels for larger fish). The last time I looked into this was when I first started going up for spring browns back in 2009, and that's when the braid vs mono posts I've found lately were posted. Thanks for your thoughts!