iiwhistlerii

So what your saying is every single great lakes body of water both above and below us are at all time record high levels but you want Lake Ontario to not be at record high levels.   Makes sense.

Just curious who do all the other great lakes get to blame thier record high levels on?  

Back them with cheap 50lb mono and then put on 150 yards of braid or so.  You are never going to need 450 ft of braid musky fishing and thatll give u enough line to cut away frayed line or turn around on snags.  Large spooled reels are your best choice for the torque.  You are going to want it cranking in hard pulling deep diving baits.  Large spooled low gear ratio reels such as okuma 45s or tekota 700s really make cranking in deep divers all day easy.   That being said tekota 600s have been my go to for years.

Beautiful fish.

Guys who think musky fishing is about smoking weed all day and driving around impaired and forget that they are putting others at risk.  Guys fishing Quebec or ontario waters without a the proper lic.  Guys constantly worried about everyone else when they should be looking in the mirror.  Too much musky bs not enough musky fishing.

You can go months or years without caps or bearing buddies and not have a bearing fail.  The grease doesnt just magically escape unless the bearing is overheating.  Hell I had a duck boat that I never bothered putting caps over the castle nut and the grease always stayed put.  1 day without a cap didnt cause your bearing to fail.  It failed, everything got hot and u lost your bearing buddy in the process.  It happens, often.

When bearing goes bad everything goes flying off little by little and the bearing cap or bearing buddy is usually the first part to get thrown.  Been there a few times over the years.  Some one stealing the bearing buddy wouldn't cause the bearing to go bad, that's a hell of a coincidence if that is the case.  The bearing going bad would cause the bearing buddy to get tossed tho and that's my guess as to what actually happened.

Sold

I think thruwire is an amazing recommendation but high quality screw eye baits like bakers or well designed plastic/resin baits like depthraiders, Jake's, believers, grandmas or perchbaits all have thier place.  Legend perchbaits truly are the standard for both durability and productivity but that being said they arent a true thruwire bait.  Nobody needs to spend a fortune on baits to have success on the Larry.  Mike Lazarus catches his biggest fish every year on perchbaits, musky candies and depthraiders.  High quality reasonably priced baits.  If the goal is to catch muskies on the Larry I'd say spend the bulk of your investment on a high quality net, rod, reel and release tools and then equip yourself with proven baits that have caught giants there for years.   Perchbaits, musky candies, believers, depthraiders, Jake's and jointed stalkers wont do you wrong and wont break the bank.  Black perch, orange belly perch or anything walleye have always produced out there.  Drop em back and set the clicker.  

6 minutes ago, NymphO said:

Anything with though wire construction. There are so many good swimming baits out there. Legend, Baker, fretthold, heddon, Gramma etc.

I have a "musky mentor". His advice, get a solid reel with 100# braid, a quality stiff rod, wire leader, appropriate swivels that won't open, a through wire bait and play the moon. As already said, when it's their time to eat, you will get bit.

It was stressed to me that it's also as important to have a deep and wide net, a good set of pliers and a pair of side cutters for a buried hook. Keep the fish alive, so there will be more Giants to be had tomorrow.

There are some mega Giants up there. Good luck !

You mentioned the importance of through wire baits twice and then listed 5 baits only 1 of which is actually true thruwire construction.  Fretthold, the least proven bait of those you've listed, but the only one that is actually throughwire.

30 minutes ago, Custom Deluxe said:

Where r u located


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Niagara county, but I do have to drive down the lake and up to clayton at some point this week if somebody wanted to meet up along the way.

I have 4 brand new daiwa 40 lcha reels for sale.  Bought 6 and am using 2 for wire dipseys and was going to use them for musky trolling but decided to go another route.  All are brand new in box.  Need $167 each to break even.  Still about $40-50 below retail.  Buyer pays shipping or willing to meet up on west end.  Perfect wire dipsey reels imo, crazy fast at 47" per crank.

Fish with good people.  Continue to expand to new areas and master new tactics.  Enjoy as much time on the water as possible.  With that the numbers and giants will come.

Tube

Had similar with my 2005 ficht 150.  Was a bad fuel pump.  The float in the pump was eaten away from ethanol and it would throttle up and then lose fuel and die.  Afterwards fuel would dump out of the airbox.  Took the top off of fuel pump to verify.  Part was over 1k but I found a beat up fuel pump on Ebay for 50 and luckily enough the float was like brand new inside.

24 minutes ago, FishnChef said:

 a lightbulb just went off in my head when you said that. Don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner but this is an issue I'm experiencing. Only had the motor out 4 times but haven't been able to pinpoint what didn't seem right but that's exactly it. I was wondering how was 72 inch shaft was coming out of the water so easily and that sometimes when I went to steer the troller it took a second to engage. Thanks

Junk awful design flaw that minnkota really should issue a solution for.  Lift assist is a joke that causes lots of issues with a tiny benefit.  Sad u have to modify the terrova by removing the spring in the assist box or strap it down with a buggy cord to make it functional for a serious angler that isnt scared to shore by a 1' chop.  No way they field tested this junk.

Another thing to keep in mind is the lift assist on the new terrova models.  In a decent swell the lift assist does just as it was designed to.  It helps the waves lift your terrova into the air and the slams it back into place.  Whatever engineer designed that awful spring loaded piece of junk needs to lose thier joh.  Way to screw up a good thing.  If u are unfortunate enough to have one of these new junk designed motors make sure you have a bungee chord or something on hand to strap the head down into place to keep your $2000 investment functional in the swells.

Agreed.  Wouldn't go lower than 80lb braid.  The lures themselves do a number on your equipment and will really wear on your knots, etc.  I'd suggest 174# single strand steel or 130-175# fluorocarbon for trolling leaders.

Amazing fishing, great event, great guys.  Thanks for putting on a good show Matt.  

Thanks for all the input guys.  We will be starting out with Cassadaga.  Depending how it goes we may take an early morning crack at Chautauqua on Sunday as recommended by Nalod.  It would be a bit of a shame to be in the area and not get out there.  

Now that we have that narrowed down and it seems most of you guys will likely by at Chautauqua, would anyone care to divulge any specifics for Cassadaga ?    Would you spend  the most time on Upper, middle, lower ? Any good landmarks to try out or techniques you would recommend ?   Totally cool if nobody wants to share that info on a public forum, figured it wouldn't  hurt to ask .

12' boat + holiday weekend pleasure boat traffic= stay off of chautauqua.  You'll be miserable out there getting pounded by waves.  If I were you I'd fish cassadaga or bear.  I cut my teeth on those lakes in a 14' canoe and then a 14' sea nymph.  Lot of fun to fish when your starting out.  Fishing a 12' boat makes them not seem so small.  Great places to learn and with any basic knowledge you should get feedback from the fish and have a good day.  Good luck.

Six hours to go. Hope something goes down. Had one close last night but no clean shot.


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On 3/22/2018 at 4:32 AM, pap said:

Excellent footage, Whistler, it’s been a crazy month here in Pa. there was only a few night this month that it wasn’t blowing like hell, of course I wasn’t feeling so good had a case of some bug. Really laid the smack down on my ass, LOL, the rest of the time it’s been snowing, just like yesterday, 10.1/2” of snow, so today will be a clean up day, and get the heavy snow off my boat covers. Been one screwy month for us. Anyway congrats to your hunt. Sounds like you guys didn’t have it easy either. Usually this month is a productive mont being it’s the mating season, we don’t quit we stay after them year round, just not as aggressive. Fishing for eyes trumps coyote hunting

Here is the fun footage from that night. Hunting partners make awful shooting benches.  If the scenario ever comes up for anybody out there, just shoot off hand.  Lol

https://youtu.be/eNdb2C7k4UE

Had 1 last goal for the year and that was to put my buddy on a late season yote. Took a couple trips but we got it done on the 3rd set tonight. Dogs were very vocal and this little female committed at the 32 minute mark to fox pros female submissive. Played 7 minutes of pup distress after she dropped and started over to grab our prize. Sure enough a dog comes in on her trail and I couldn't get still enough without my tripod to seal the deal on the double. (Shooting off ur partners back is an awful way to keep still by the way). Lol

The lines in the video are caused from the core starting to freeze on the thermal. 3 straight long sets without a break was apparently enough to make it happen. I've seen it in my handheld monocular on frigid days but never got the scope cold enough to make it happen until tonight.
 

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Just for comparison this is my pulsar thermal from the same spot the same night for comparison. Herd of deer didn't care for whimpers.