rdebadts

We did our maiden voyage April 14 at Sodus.  By the time we filled the boat up with gas and messed around with it to make sure everything was working, we were fishing at 9 AM. We started trolling right out of the channel and fished for about an hour.  Great color after the big blow so endless good water to fish.  Ended up whacking about a half a dozen browns, mostly in 10 feet of water.  Despite a good amount of muddy water, the fish seem to want natural colored sticks (gold was great).  It was nice that most of what we caught was cookie cutters, glad to have the young browns around again. 
 

as it turns out, a lot of guys ended up getting kings a bit deeper.  There was alot of really nice catches for the guys who are out all day.  Good stuff.

boat ran great, and is tucked in and ready to go for the first full trip soon!

Honestly, you can find kings out of any port early July- it's often an offshore bite, so be prepared to cover water.  Oak, olcott, sandy are all well fished ports with much more networking/info sharing than other ports, so guys tend to do well there for sure 

For dipseys, with flashers, I use 30 lb.  Otherwise I run 20 lb  Generally I run 1 rod length of floro for my dipseys- so about 8 ft.

Ive often wondered how much it matters with conventional dipseys- they're pretty big, with a lot of hard ware and most guys run them close (6-9 ft) to the lure.  
 

For planer/rigger rods, in the spring I run 8-10 lb floro and then 15-20 when I'm targeting kings- usually at least 20-30 ft leader.

Thought I would post this video on this crappy March day. This is a trip I took with my kids and nephew May of last year out of Sodus.  Pretty much ideal action, considering who I had out. We caught steelhead, a few young kings, and one decent king. Everyone had action and was happy. I really appreciate that. My kids are starting to get more into fishing, and have the ability to stay out longer... It's a dream come true. 
 

I will say- we've seen a pretty big uptick in lake whitefish catches and no one is complaining about those efforts.  They're native and many didn't know if our lake could sustain them either.  
 

Bloater are interesting because they prefer much deeper sections of the lake (600 +) if I recall, and that segment of the lake is largely devoid of life for most of the year, isn't it?

My boat made its annual pilgrimage to olcott Friday night. We filled her with gas (ouch) and tied up safely at the dock at about 8:30 PM.

I didn't have any solid intel, so I winged it Saturday; we started our morning in 80 feet of water on a northwest troll just east of Wilson. We had top lines on one board, short cores on the other board with ss spoons, and a mix of regular/mag spoons and meat on Riggers and Dipseys.  
 

we started the day with a coho on a 4 color core, and that rod went off again about 15 minutes later (probably another ho). Then I had a hit on the top line with a red spoon, and we missed that one too. We decided to move out looking for Kings because everyone was in the LOC, and we eventually found good screens in 180 to 220 on the east side of the bar.  We picked away at two-year-old salmon, with the biggest one being maybe about 10 pounds. All told we had 14 or 15 bites, but it was a weird, un-patternable, frustrating bite overall.  My long lines were getting short hit a lot.  We simplified our spread to 8 rods with all the traffic, and I think every rod took a bite, but I don't think we had more than two or three bites on any individual rig.  Tons of fish on the screen, lots of streakers- frustratingly few takes.  Blue was the spook color of the day and our better fish came on riggers 90-115 and meat on dipseys 200+ out.
 

i've been having my son and nephew fish a lot more, and they were out again Saturday!  I had them catch all of the fish. Spring kings are wild, so our catch rate was... pretty low.   That's OK with me though!!! The boys had a good time and we went in at about 11:15 when the east wind had become particularly annoying.  

Here's day 1 of the sodus pro am.  
 

We had a good bite in kings reasonably nearshore leading up to the tourney, but did go grab some waypoints deep just in case while prefishing- and it's a damn good thing we did. 
our inside bite died Saturday am, so we decided at 10 am to make a big run and target offshore kings- and we landed right on em.  Turned a meh day into a pretty darn good day, in the last few hours.  This had us top 7 (or 5, I forget) after day 1. 
 

I had to work Saturday and the forecast for Sunday is as ideal, so we decided to have a kids fishing trip out of sodus.  My brother and I took my son (9) nephew (10) and daughter (11) on an offshore fishing trip, after hearing of a great king bite all week.  
 

we ran out to 120 and set up with 3 rigger (40, 55, 85) a slide diver out 90 and a regular dipsey out 180.  On one board we did top lines, and the other we did short cores.  It was An all spoon program, to start.

we had pretty steady action 180-240 on north south trolls. 3 of our first 4 fish were steelhead in the top 20 feet - as long as it had some red on it (mixed veggies worked too).  Eventually kings took over the action, and our last 8 or 9 bites were salmon.  We had an even mix of 1 and 2 year old salmon, with one 14 lb king that absolutely trashed my spread (had 4 lines wrapped up in it after almost passing my planer board, lol).  Bites were spoons mostly 35-60 down (10 color, 7 color, 100 dipsey, rigger) and we had one deep rigger that took all of our major shots (we only converted one of the 4 though).  Weather was gorgeous, kids had a blast- an ideal day 

Water temp is 47 on the surface. Starting to see a lot more bait, especially in that 150 to 200 range.  The salmon were stuffed with a 2-3 inch alewife.

sounded like a lot of the big fish moved east on us. 

I've had the kids out several times for browns and lakers, but never kings. here is their first trip going after kings.  We got each of them a king- my sons was literally as big as him.  A dream realized for this fisherman.  I got a particularly big kick out of their commentary.  Enjoy!

Gotta love this!!

Holy hell, what a brown!

Fished sodus Sunday am with my nephew and a good buddy's son.  We started on the shoreline but were greeted with ice cold 41° water that was crystal clear. I quickly realized that the persistent south wind trashed the conditions and that was not going to work, so we slid out deeper looking for other options. We ended up finding a good bite on Lakers, coho, and even a steelhead fishing in about 120 feet of water.  We ran a small grease trap on the corner rigger, and the rest was spoons from the surface down to about 50 feet (short cores, top lines, slide divers, etc).  Small spoons in silver and red did the trick for the silvers . I saw some stuff a little deeper, but no takers with a bunch of different flasher/fly/meat combos on the port rigger/dipsey.   Overall a decent bite in kinda crappy conditions- kids had fun (I was even let them rig a bit which is new for me) and we didn't get too beat up. 
 

After I got in,  I found out that a bunch of guys smashed kings just outside of me!!!  Crap.  Oh well.  

Here is our big fish Friday from 2022, out of sodus.  Our good marks and fish dried up west, but we eventually found them west, and then way out deep.  78 pts didn't get us any money- oh well.  
 

watch the cluster**** at the end- wire dipsey got wrapped around itself and the line snapped- somehow I was able to grab the line and we hand lined a 21 lb king from 500 feet!!! My poor hand was beat up after that ordeal!

stellar work man!

Thanks for the great content!

do you find that bay rats are better dirty water sticks, and smithwicks etc are better for clean water?  That's been my observation 

 
this was one of my favorite trips of the year, not because the fishing was spectacular (it WAS very good) but because of who I was fishing with. My 9 year old nephew Nate is obsessed with fishing and is always begging me to take him- the weather was good and man did he have a good day .  
 

it took us a while to dial in the big ones- we started 100-150 catching plenty of one and two year old salmon and a brown, but by mid morning, we had found the bigger kings out just a smidge deeper and west. They wanted to meet on Twinkie Riggs off of dipseys and mag spoons.  
 

We let Nate catch most of the fish- and he handles the rod Better than some adults I know!

We took our maiden voyage out of sodus Saturday 4/8, and man, what a day it was!

Basically, a perfect set up, with big wind a few days before we went out. We were greeted with plenty of brown and green water to fish, and we picked at fish all along the shoreline.  I had my nephew Evan, and one of my fishing mentor (Bob's) grandson on the boat,  and those boys had quite a good time!  We had a few doubles, and even a triple!

We ended up about 15 for 20, or something like that, by about 1030 in the morning. Most of our fish were mixed year class Browns, but we did catch three Cohos, and white fish as a kicker(my first ever)!   Our biggest brown was about nine or 10 pounds. The fish were a little bit deeper than I would've expected; our best depth of water was about 15 to 20 feet. They certainly wanted natural colored stickbaits more than brightly colored stickbaits, despite the muddy water.

I am very happy to see cookie cutters around again. Whatever they did with a stocking last year seems to have worked well.

Here's a video from last July out of oak Orchard.  Hopped on the boat with my buddy Andy who docks there for the year. We started in 120 to 180, and the screens were great, but all we could find is baby kings. We made a big move out to 350 to 400 and that's definitely where the bigger fish were. We had steady action on kings, Coho, and steel.  It was just the two of us, so it was a bit of craziness a few times!

 Enjoy!

I'll predict that you'll actually come fish browns with me for once!

Here's a video from last spring, just to get you all in the mood for the season.  I had a tough time locating kings consistently late may- but we had no trouble at all finding coho and steel!  Enjoy!

Anyone notice the massive increase in cormorants in all the ponds along the parkway between greece and the oak?  It's really concerning how many birds there are roosting there now.  It stinks, and many of the trees are already dying.  Hope the Dec is able to do something about that soon!

Here's a pretty good day of steelhead and coho fishing out of olcott a few weeks ago.  They mostly wanted top lines and short cores but we did catch a few on high dipseys and 25-40 riggers as well.  We mostly worked 110 to 150 from the red barn back to the microwave

Here's a trip from a few weeks ago (may 22) out of olcott.  It was the easiest, most relaxing fishing you can imagine- out at 6, in by 10, on a flat calm lake.  We had plenty of action on good eating coho, and a few kings as kickers.  Just the way it should be.  Enjoy!

Did a cool trip last may out of buzzards bay in mass.  We hit the seabass just right, and it was an absolute blast.  Big fish on light tackle in shallow water.  Just like ya dream about 

Here's a video I made about fishing the West End in May. I remember the first time I came down there, it was pretty intimidating. Mind you, I had been fishing successfully on the East End for about 10 years.

So, I thought I would put something together to help any new guys, or people fishing down there for the first time.

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