Big Water

My brother doesn't believe weathermen either. He just retired as a chief meteorologist in San Diego county. Tells me accuweather guys are the worse and probably couldn't find jobs anywhere else. Basically, don't look beyond 5-6 days because it is 50/50 after that.

That's funny you mention Accuweather.  When we moved to State College, PA, my wife, who has a four year comp sci degree applied for a job with them.  They were offering McDonalds wages for an IT person.  Needless to say, she turned them down.  It doesn't surprise me that they have a bad rap.  The owner, Joel something or other, has a terrible reputation in this town also.

It just looks like a poor attempt to satisfy some academic criterion for a business case. I take him at his word but it points out the chasm between real life and academia.

Now if he starts a company that replaces boat carpeting, I'll be onboard. I've been looking for that service for quite some time and it seems to be non-existent in my area.

Keep it to waves three feet or less and get off of the water when it starts to get bad and you'll be ok. If you have manual riggers, you'll be looking for electronics soon. If you get hooked on Ontario like I did, you'll be spending money like a drunk sailor soon.

That looks like my winter boat except mine is an 18.5' dual console. All hooked up and ready for the weekend. Took a lot of salmon from it before I got my bigger boat.

A friend of mine uses an iPilot on an 18' boat and loves it. It's a 24v unit and I believe a 72" shaft. Maybe he'll weigh in.

Core is short for lead core line.  It sinks at about 4-5' for every 30' out.  The line also changes color every 30' so "two colors" is 60' and will sink about 10' at normal trolling speeds.  You can use mono or braid backing and tie 2/3/4 colors on to get to different depths.  Also use a mono or floro leader of maybe 15'25'. 

I've had great success fishing a local lake for lake trout with Thomas Speedy Shiners. Color varied day to day but they always produced.

Nice Fish!!  Thanks for posting.  I'm jealous.

The big "dog ticks" that we often see on our pets don't carry lymes disease. It's those minuscule deer ticks that can look like a spec of pepper that are the problem. You can't see them easily until they're already embedded and engorged. Use Permethrin on your clothing. Works well and lasts through several washings.

Sorry I don't have a pic, but the MS Caddy Shack UV killed in May. Later in the season it was a mixed bag with no spoons shining for more than a day or two.

Fwiw I had the same boat with a 70 hp Johnson that topped out at 46 mph. I don't think he's far off. Maybe a tailwind.

Thank you for the information.

As I stated earlier I have no knowledge of planner boards. Is there a special setup I will need? I was looking at then earlier and seem to have limited information on how they work and setups.

You're only allowed 3 rods per fisherman, so unless you plan to do this a lot, I'd buy some small inline boards and learn how to use them They are easy and work well.  Drop a couple of mono lines 100-150' back from the boat and attach those to your down rigger releases.  They only need to be down 2-7' when you're fishing in shallow for springtime browns (6 to 15 feet of water).  Run two riggers, two inlines and maybe a rod by itself straight out the back.  Bright colored stick baits for muddy/cloudy water and some natural colors for clearer water.  Find the warmer water pockets and they will hold fish.  This is usually the muddy/colored water.  Keep all baits a good distance from boat, because like mentioned earlier, the browns are spooky.  You can pick up coho, lakers and an occasional king this way also.  Good luck.

You should have fished the west end of the lake this past spring.  You couldn't keep them off of the lines.  Speed made no difference and lure selection made little difference.  The only thing you could do was move out of the area, but there were kings mixed in with them, so we didn't.  Eventually we dropped down to 4 rods and ended up with all four rods hitting within 1-2 minutes.  We actually caught 5 fish on those four rods because we had a double on one that hit the slider.   The deck was GREASY!

Just got back from Pittsburgh or I'd have been all over that offer.  Hoping to get my boat up to Seneca maybe starting in late November.  Late fall/winter fishing there is great!  Good luck out there.  Tell Rusty Rat ,Doug said hi if he's on the lake.

After a couple of years asking the same question and getting an assortment of answers, does anyone have the definitive answer? The mature salmon that will be running the streams this year are;

3 years old

3 1/2 years old

4 years old

4 1/2 years old

I understand that some will run a year earlier than normal and also a year or two later. I'm talking about the norm.

I always assumed this year's run would have hatched in spring 2012 making them 3 1/2 years old.

I like to set the drag very lite, so any added resistance will pull the drag out. Good way to see when a skippy hits, then just tighten the drag to fight the fish. Good Luck

Capt Rich.

Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United mobile app

What Rich said.

Great report Rick

Wow that's a little scarey seeing that big sucker up on the house like that. Don't let the cat out ..lol

I am running video now bought a new truth cam at Wally's where we see the cubs . That particular opening is quite remote I think they feel like they can hangout and rest up there is a high flat surrounded by really thick cover.

The cats are so used to the Bears they walk right past them. Neither seems to care.

Just to muddy the waters, 2.0 to 2.2 on Fish Hawk. 44-48 degree temps. That's been my sweet spot.

This one's well fed too!

a slaughter of 8lbs to 14lbs kings....

no big kings were around this spring.

that was evident by the tournament and derby results.

Same here. I'm wondering if we're just depleting next year's stock.

Guy I fish with made two hand gaffs out of a piece of rebar and ground them and painted them. Work great and cheap.

A friend was running rubber flukes in a whole bait head a month ago while I was running meat and MC Rockets on my boat. He was taking more fish and hits than me. He did that because he didn't have any cut bait but uses that rig for stripers at a local lake.

Very nice Atlantic. Congrats!

Great to hear you found them. Keep up the reports!