rolmops

Easy now. Don't give them away before you catch them.

This morning everything was hidden in some serious fog, so I chose to do some maintenance and cleaning until the fog would burn off. That took to about noon

I finished playing with transducers and the end result is that the 600 watt Airmar is a better choice than the 1kw. The cone on the 600 is wider, which at the depth we work at, is what I need.

Going out to check it , I found that the temperatures went way up.  Over 130 feet the surface at 57 and 50 foot down 54.7. I did not look for a thermocline but it might be setting up. Bait was plentyful at 50 down over a hundred feet. In the 2 hours on the water I managed one steelhead and one king, neither of them very big. It was my first steelhead of the year

Some people are not smart enough to understand scientific explanations and reasoning. They are usually quite loud.

Today was mostly about fine tuning my transducers. ( an Airmar tr258 and a Garmin 56UHD). It meant going back and forth to the public launch from around a hundred feet of water. The Tr258 has a narrow cone, but it is a bit wider than than the TR260, while the 56 seems to do better in shallower water.

Having to run the riggers in the water, without lures made no sense so put a seasick wobbler  on one and a bloody nose on the other. For good measure 10 colors went out the back with a Superman. The superman caught a big laker, which I really did not expect. Up to now , the only fish that hit a superman were brown trout. but this week it did 2 lakers.

The wobbler and the bloody nose each did a salmon or two.

The Garmin autopilot is really what makes solo fishing easy. It's pricy, but it makes solo fishing , even in choppy water , very enjoyable.

It might be too many marinas chasing too few customers.

Even today Sleepy hollow Marina (Frank's) is mostly empty slips in spite of his very reasonable prices. Tom does well because he has a launch, a repair shop on the premises, a great loving golden retriever and just a happy attitude towards life.

If you still have it, I will take it. I can pick it up either at Sandy or at your house, whichever is more convenient for you.

7 minutes ago, whaler1 said:

I texted with the owner a few years ago. Told me it was $65 a foot and if that didn’t work not to bother him. 

I currently pay $35 ,so that is about half of what this other marina would cost. So unless this guy requires some common sense, he will have an empty marina.

On Sandy Creek just south and west of the bridge of the Parkway there is a lot of work (or so it seems) going on. The brush has been cleared out and they are advertising the availability of ice, fuel and, presumably, slips. But there is only one pontoon moored in that quite big place. It looks like a nice place, close to the lake and the creek is fairly deep over there already. Does it have a launch?. I would like to find out more, but the gate is closed all the time so it is hard to figure out what is going on. 

Any info?

4 hours ago, Gator said:

Are you over at Frank's again or did you get a spot with Tommy this year?

I'm at Frank's again, Maybe next year Tom will have a spot open.

Finally, after many delays my splash down. Everything is working as it should be.

Fished between 11am and 1.30 pm from 40 feet to 75 slightly east of the creek. The temperature at the surface and 65 foot down is the same (47.5) . There is no bait visible on the screen and the catch is only one laker on a stinger superman. So nothing to write home about, but it is good to see that everything works.

There are online providers that sell original mercury parts. You can check Crowley Marine. They are trustworthy.

I know that this is only one year, so this may be presumptuous, but could it be that a very gradual overall rise in temperature ( as in climate change) slowly pushes the northern maximum range of alewives a bit farther north, making Lake Ontario a more friendly environment for Alewives, making them a more stable food source for salmon instead of up and down years dependent on the weather.  Or is this just coincidence?

Carp will give you a wild fight. They will outclass bass any day of the week 

Maybe HB2 with his rowboat will have a ball fly fishing for alewives. 

Anyway, this also means that the salmon will be packing on the pounds and if they keep on gorging themselves until September, we might finally see some 30+ pounders again.

I had the same situation last year , and decided to get a Garmin with chartplotting and fishfinder. The Furuno only has 50 and 200. That makes the cone quite narrow and not very useful in shallower water. The garmin provides me with a much wider beam, with depending on the transducer used has wavelengths that do not interfere with the Furuno,  which is not only useful for shallower water, but also for copper on the boards. When I see fish on the side, I adjust my course a bit so the copper will go to where the fish is. Besides, the Garmin has a a nice big screen.

Hop over to Hamlin state Park This morning they were still sort of alive ,but swimming laying sideways on the bottom. You may have to preserve them.

This morning while walking my dogs in Hamlin State Park along the beach, I saw tons of birds just floating on the water. It caught my attention because until now most  of the gulls were flying looking for breakfast. As we walked, my dogs started to jump in the water chasing things. It turned out to be dying alewives. 

It is probably the result of an upwelling of cold water, but it reminded me of last year's die off and the effect it had on fishing. With many dead and dying fish in the water all mister salmon has to do is open his mouth and swallow bait without having to work for it. As a result, the bite really slowed down, Let's hope that this is just a small event

Hello, rodhog. I'll take the Scotties. When will be a good time for me to come over?

I love salmon fishing exactly because it is a team effort. Once a year I fish the LOC with 3 other guys and we have done this for many years. It is a week of renting a cabin and tasting each others moose, deer and smoked salmon. If not for this week I would not spend any time with very pro gun people who cannot even imagine pointing a gun at another person. I would never know how many types of Kentucky Bourbon there are and how good they taste. This derby is a great social event , but as many have said, it is advertised (if at all) as a fishing competition.

Another reason for its waning popularity is all the other tournaments. There are competing fishing tournaments all over the place, often there are several ones during the same weekend. If there was one big tournament more boats would participate.

We had much the same results in Olcott with a few just under 20 pound fish. On the first few days the were aggressively attacking and engulfing the lures, but on Friday, they had become less aggressive and we lost quite a few because they did not hit the lures quite as hard. 

Their stomachs were full of both large and small bait. Last year , there were tons of Coho and Atlantics,but this time around it was almost exclusively kings.

We did not try for Atlantics.

Gill thinks that there was a very succesfull natural reproduction in some creeks 2 years ago and added to that lots of bait available caused this huge king population.

SPRO

17 hours ago, chinook35 said:

Cormorants are a very wary bird 

getting them In shotgun range consistently would be a challenge. 
I believe the only way to make a dent in the population is to do what the charter captains out of Henderson did in the ‘80’s 

they surrounded  their nesting island ( little Galoo) and had a turkey shoot 

some went to jail over it , but it brought attention to the problem 

the DEC had a program to oil the eggs so they wouldn’t hatch. That program needs to be re established 

they have spread to all the inland lakes in central NY. Oneida is full of the critters   Something needs to be done and soon 

 

For the islands, there also is a ,legally spoken, vague program. As in catching some raccoons and letting them go before and during the nesting season. Raccoons love eggs and as long as their surprise appearance in unexpected places cannot be traced, everybody is fine with it. The raccoons will eat the eggs and scare the birds away.

i would love to see Bill's face when he discovers that the birdies are using his Whaler as their toilet.

Tom feeds them to fatten them up before the season starts

Is there going to be a thread with recipes for cormorants?