Second Chance 22

Ray, do you remember when: Trout season in the tribs closed October 30? Today the fall runs are hammered without regard to the resource. (those 7 pound landlocks wouldn't stand a chance, in a small creek the ones that aren't caught legally would are lifted) It was illegal to use or possess fish eggs whole or crushed on the tribs. Any dolt (even me) can catch rainbows on eggs. Plus, hens that should be spawning are killed for their spawn. When was the last time you saw someone fishing a sponge? A snagged rainbow was immediately returned to the water. The introduction of the Pacific Salmon changed all of that. Many lifters don't make any effort to fish legally instead concentrating on snagging fish in the mouth. We are lucky we have any rainbows at all, we have done nothing to protect them.

July 1st (tomorrow) is the last day to sign up on line for the Red Cross derby and get the online discount for early registration.

We always fish this derby if we can fit it in. Saturday hit the water on the South end at about 5AM and trolled up the West side. Quickly caught a small laker and and a rainbow while setting up. Fish were scattered in pods- took doubles in several spots followed by dry spell- we should have circled and worked the "fishy" spots, but I wanted to continue North to where I had had past success. Fished mostly over 120-140FOW. Finished the day with 12 lakers and one rainbow. Lakers included a 28" fish, but it didn't even weigh 7 pounds. Rainbow weighed 3-12 and took a small blue/white honeybee. Bait pods were scattered over deep water about 40 foot down, but we never did find any trout near them. Fleas are starting to show up, but were no big deal. Sunday was hot and calm and the fish simply weren't hitting. We finished with 8 lakers and a 3 lb. smallmouth taken 15 foot down over 150. Go figure. Nice little tournament with 153 anglers. Lunker (which paid about $495 as I recall) was a 9-2 laker. Second lunker was a 9 pound pike. Categories included lake trout, rainbows, browns, walleye, perch, pike, smallmouth, largemouth and junior gamefish and junior panfish. My little rainbow was best in class and paid $144.

There would be no reason to track the lakers from position one thru 482. If a lake trout is too small to qualify for a major prize it drops into the appropriate minor division (senior citizen, female, male, teenage, juvenille) so in essence there are 5 six place fish, 5 seventh place fish and so on. The six place fish in teenage is usually smaller than six place in female division, so you can see the fish or not really sorted one thru 482 by size. Hope this helps.

I've been trolling rigs for about 15 years, but with a few differences. About 10 of my former coworkers ran rigs and I picked up alot of info from them. I tried using Penn 49's and Okuma linecounters, both were destroyed in less than one season. I use Penn 320 GTIs and 340s. The clickers on these reels are crap, but other than that they hold up. I usually have 3 completed rods/rigs ready to go at any one time ( I know one guy that use to run 8 rigs at once!). At any rate, linecounters are totally unnecessary. The rigs are tied so that the barrel swivels (bead chains fatigue with age and break) are the same (measured with a tape measure) distance apart- usually 15 ft or 20 ft. As the Finger Lakes have gotten clearer, I have found the 15ft distance to be less productive than in the past. Anyway, on a rig with 20 foot spacing, once you have your 5 lures on, you have 80 ft. of line in the water. Let out line to the next bead and you have 100 ft and so on. If you take a fish you can repeat the depth by letting out the exact same amount of line. This method is way more accurate than the 47's linecounter function (I have some 47s that I use with my downriggers). Really skilled rig runners can feel the bottom when they lower the weight, I've never been that good at it. My leaders are 12 fluorocarbon with a spring clip on one end and a quaility snap swivel on the other. I have tried using braid as leaders and it was a total disaster. The thin diameter of the braid lets it tangle up in the spring clips and resulted in the worse tangles. Leaders are stored on a piece of 2 inch thick styrofoam insulation board which is about 24 inches long and 16 inches wide. The lures are hooked into one edge of the board and the leaders are wrapped on the board until you run out of leader and then the spring clip is hooked into the board. Depending on how welll you space the leaders, you can get about a dozen leaders on one board. Leaders don't belong in the boat while you are fishing. If you are taking them off everytime you get a fish, you are doing a lot of unnecessary work. If a fish is hooked on anything other than the top leader you bring the rig up until the top leader is reached, then you simply play the leader out on the top of the water while you continue to hand line the fish. This process is repeated until the leader with the fish is reached. After the fish is unhooked, I can have the entire rig lowered back to the same depth in 20 seconds or so. With a little practice, you will never have any tangles (unless your boat driver is an IDIOT). I have 3 rod holders on each side of my boat. After I reel up the rig to the top leader I place the rod in the middle holder to hand line the rest of the rig up. If I decide to change lures, I bring up the rig to the desired leader, wrap the rig main line 3 quick wraps around the rod holder and have my hands free to change the lure. Quite often I run two rigs while I run two downriggers for my wife. If the fish are hitting the downriggers but not the rigs, you are running to fast. Running Seth Green rigs requires some work, but it isn't near as difficult as some make it.

The recently concluded Seneca Derby had 1,405 entrants. They weighed in 482 laker trout, 102 landlocked salmon, 27 rainbows and 26 brown.

Before you mess with any of the settings I would recommend checking the transducer. Sometimes mine pivots back (usually after running full bore) so that it doesn't point properly at the lake bottom, hence it doesn't get the proper signal return.

So exactly what does the "Thats it" look like? Is it silver/black? white/black? or something else?

I was told that the Lampreys started running last week. Rumor has it that two gents speared about 50 of them.

Bear's is at 29 Hector Street in T-Burg. It's basically at the SE corner of the intersection of Rte 96 and Rte 228.

The National Weather Service has issued a FREEZE warning for tonight with lows in the mid twenties..............

If your Mag 10 has the "short stop" feature, the downrigger cable on the drum needs to be in contact with the spring cable contact for the unit to work correctly. Hope this helps.

Results of the annual trout derby on Naples Creek were recently posted in the Buffalo News. 431 registered entrants weighed in 120 rainbows. Thomas Rengert won the contest with a 9-12 bow. Another angler caught one over 10 lbs. , but they weren't entered in the contest.

Yes, and Gov. Paterson was there to watch! Seriously, DEC doesn't stock Catherine Creek and doesn't plan to. I was told that a stream census taken there last year revealed high numbers (best numbers in years) of small 'bows. So, there is no reason to stock. Also, they prefer to keep the "wild" strain of fish intact and don't want to mess things up with stockies that aren't aren't as likely to survive any way. Interesting that while Region 8 doesn't stock rainbows in Keuka, Seneca or Canandaigua while Region 7 stocks high numbers in Cayuga and Owasco. Stocking totals are available on the DEC web site.

250 fish? Back in the day, 2000 fish (Sping and Fall runs) was a good year. The ladder needs to be open all Winter- rainbows don't wait until March to run.

Thank you, to the 942 of you that attended yesterdays flea market and tackle show. Among other things, we will use the proceeds to send two youngsters to DEC Camp this Summer. Thanks again.

See you Sunday. Will Lee and Tif be there?

Entry blanks are finally available online at the National Lake Trout Derby website.

DEC shocked Catherine Thursday and today. Several Elmira news sources reported on the activities yesterday and WETM posted about 15 pictures on their web site. I caught up with them on lower Havana Glen Creek this morning as they were finishing up. Between the main creek and the Rt. 14 bridge they only found 4 rainbows- 3 small males and one nice 8lb. female. These fish were still "green" and had not spawned, but the creek also has a lot of suckers in it, which means the season is pretty far along. I was told that yesterday they only found about 50 trout. Many of the trout are colored up indicating that they have been in the creek for quite a while. Biggest rainbow shocked was just over 9lbs.

I was told that it is highly unlikely this year due to the austerity budget at DEC.

The 2010 entry blank should be available on line soon. The webmaster was on vacation (someplace warm) during January. They have returned and the web site should be updated soon. Billy's (Seneca Marine) is NOT a derby sign up location this year. Entry blanks should be available at Famous Brands in Watkins.

This is well worth doing. For region eight lakes call the DEC at 585 226-5343. For region seven lakes call the DEC at 607 753-3095 ext. 213.

No, my deer go straight from the woods to the butcher shop. They hang in a cooler where they can't spoil. Our neighbors on 327 did hang a couple this year, you might have seen theirs.

First of all, I didn't take the deer. I took a much smaller, but respectable eight point. (see below) A good neighbor and family friend (one of a very few allowed to hunt our property) took the 10 pt. buck. When this buck was young he spent a lot of time in my parents backyard in Enfield grazing on the lawn or munching apples. As he got older, he wasn't on the lawn during daylight much except during the late Winter, he was only there during darkness. During the Winter he (and others) did severe damage to our landscaping all around the house. I would see him ocasionally in my headlights entering or leaving our driveway. I grew up on this property and have hunted it for more than 40 years. I get my buck every year, but I have never taken anything like this. The property and all of the surrounding properties are posted and we just don't have the hunting pressure that we did 20 years ago. Ray, as far as I know, the bucks you mentioned are still running. This is my deer.

I let this deer walk- 3 years ago when he was a yearling six point. Green score is 157.