schreckstoff

That pic could go on the cover of the annual DEC fishing booklet except for those excessively revealing shorts!  Ha I crack me up.

First time fishing the late afternoon evening shift - I kind of liked it.

Swega was flat & hot.  About 6 or so boats out around 5 and most were fishing 120' to 300'+.  We looked for cold water and had to drop the probe to 110' or 120' to find 49deg.  We did not mark much, but that may be due to me not having the Helix settings right.  Fished riggers and wire divers, fished deep (400') till 7 without a hit, then it got better. Found fish in a fairly small spot, around 300-320' out in front.  Wire, MagDipsy 3setting, 220-240' out, I'm assuming that was running around 100'. Only thing that worked was 8" DeathWish SpinDr & Bloodydeath Atomic fly, it took a 22 and 16lber and a yearling.  Was running all sorts of glow, green, and black - on spoons, FF, Fmeat...nothing on those.

Tried running a high and low diver for the first time....yeah, I have a quite a bit more to learn. Tangled Tackle youtube videos make it look easy...but I managed to screw it up...multiple times.  Ended up fighting both big fish on 2 rods. It was good laughs with 2 of us standing next to each other fighting the same fish....noobs!  As i turns out, all those posts that talk about using good swivels and checking them aren't kidding.  Ran my Chinook Divers, I like the way they work vs the mag Dipsy.

Ran wire mag dipsy’s out 110 to 320ft, settings 2 & 3.  FLasher fly and Flasher/Rocket... was not our day. We were about to break out the “save the day Gambler rigs” when we started having engine issues, limped in but made it. Turned out a motor mount was loose, and a plug wire  and bolts holding alternator had backed out....boat gremlins suck!

Absolutely, all true. Like most non native species, in the beginning there can often be much doom and gloom, and predicting. Then when everything settles down and we get enough observations to look at the whole picture, the initial predictions might not necessarily be spot on.
 

 Byth spines in particular were found to “ball up” by the hundreds,  and get stuck in Alewife stomachs so there was concern that Alewife could not keep eating them, and would  starve...but no one told the Alewife and they kept eating them when they were abundant and Alew were getting bigger and bigger. They potentially extend the Alewife growing season...maybe by a month or more. We frequently find Byth spines in Alewife stomachs in April, presumably left over from fall/winter.

They do have a lower energy density than Daphnia as GillT notes  but they are also 50+ times heavier than the small Daphnia they eat, so even if their quality as food is not quite as good , Alewife do not work nearly as hard to eat more total food....a net gain.

A picture showing what Sk8man was explaining. Cercopagis or fishhook flea on top, Bythotrephes or spinywater flea on bottom & bigger.  Both of them seem to make alewife grow very fast. Cercopagis is usually peaking first in the season, like now, and Byth numbers climb and peak in fall, after they munch down the Cerco. We have this idea that Byth seems to allow Alewife to stay up in the water column feeding,  later in the fall than they used to before we had them. Fascinating and frustrating!

I just finished setting up 2 new Blood Run diver rods to saw through the snot. That BR wire is really nice to handle.

That blue leopard is hot for u!

The wind/wave buoy mid lake off Roch is a good source of current conditions in case no one gets back to you. 
The combination And trajectories of nominal wave height:

https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/show_plot.php?station=45012&meas=wvht&uom=E&time_diff=-4&time_label=EDT

wind speed:

https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/show_plot.php?station=45012&meas=wspd&uom=E&time_diff=-4&time_label=EDT

and wind direction helps me plan:

https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/show_plot.php?station=45012&meas=wdir&uom=E&time_diff=-4&time_label=EDT

Excellent report and pictures, thanks!

That warm water division is kind of a neat idea GT!

LOU community,

If anyone is interested in helping to collect stomachs from Lake Ontario trout and salmon you clean please see this website for instructions (http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/120435.html) or PM me on here. Collecting the stomachs is fairly easy, there is a small amount of information we are looking to have written down, and everything can be tossed in a plastic bag and frozen. The website explains it all.  Six drop off freezers, that have sample bags too, are located from Fort Niagara to Oswego. If you can get samples but not get them to a freezer PM me and we might be able to accommodate.

A big thank you to the anglers and charter captains who have been saving and sending stomach samples already, but we always need more! The prey fish composition from these samples will be compared to historic samples (thank you all for that help) and you'll see results of all those data in upcoming reports. Some of my colleagues information is out there if you have any questions and always feel free to PM me on here.

Thanks again,

Brian Weidel

RE: arrows, I have become a student of the Ranch Fairy (YouTube if u haven’t seen him), heavy stiff arrows, high FOC, no “Twizzlers” no Flappers anymore for me. 

Fished 6 till noon, 70-230 FOW, bait was most consistent 70-90 FOW, some out to 150FOW  but couldn’t get anything to go. Tried lots of stuff, even Gambler rigs bouncing on bottom couldn’t get us  a LT. Saw very few if any bigger fish marks on graph. 60-62 deg on surface, 50-55deg water was 80-100 ft down. Weather and company were great.

Finished with  GreatLaker today and his dad, had a great day of fun, a little light on fish. Landed a nice brown and laker and found a little laker on when we pulled lines. Fished S of Taughannock, marked fish and bait all over, shallow and deep. No real pattern, goby stick off board took Brown, rigger spoon took laker. Good stories and laughs. Lots of memories being back in Cayuga south end, learned how to troll there ~20yrs ago by reading this site. 

Stevent that is really interesting, thanks for sharing. 

My wife and I love sushi and make it almost weekly, but we don’t use raw freshwater fish because of the parasite risk . We’ve done lightly cooked salmon but I would rather the texture of raw so we stick with marine caught salmon. You have me thinking though, now that I (finally) learned how bleeding helps the flesh quality I will probably try to freeze some and make some rolls or something. I usually use myself as a test case before feeding my experiments to others.  

I started doing it this year and also wish I had always done it. Quality is better and the fillet process is WAY better.

“a flasher n’Senko” I like the idea but you’d  have to refer to it by some obscure name....like a Chady-K rig! 

One of my first jobs working in the Finger Lakes (1998) was angler diets from Skan & Owasco, Skan Lakers had monarch butterflies in stomachs frequently.  I bet some LOU folks helped collect those.
 

And yes I just checked the smoker......spring Cayuga lakers are tasty!

Lakers were shallow this AM (5/7) and apparently took advantage of the full moon to chow on perch, rockbass, goby, Alewife, and a fat senko-like soft plastic.

boards with stick baits were hot till 9am, then nothing. all colors seemed to work 

Good pics and Browns catch too! 

27 yearling Alewife is definitely an interesting sign, Combined with the observations of that size Alewife in the water intakes all winter (thanksBG) it suggests there was a good yearclass produced last yr they made it through the winter....now as long as some make it to adults

Similar story at Oak on 5/1 , marked fish in shallow, more in 40 FOW and quite a few out in 120FOW where we found some warmer water. Most marks 10-40ft down. Only managed to get lakers to hit, threw everything we had at them. 
 

FYI: saw a few decent sized logs floating about.

14-17” sounds like Maybe a 3 yr old, 2017 Yearclass, interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Very cool, heard reports of them in Chaumont too, which is not surprising, cause they spawn there. They are tasty!!

Willmarsh14-

Cisco by Oswego is intriguing. That part of the lake is one of the best, and unfortunately last, for Lake Whitefish (yum) but we have not sampled many Cisco there. What kind of sizes were ya getting? 

That has to be one of the best titles I’ve seen on here in a long time. Great turkey pics!