HB2

It depends 

Last few trips temp was deep at 100 so flasher on my probe rigger and 2 spoons  stacked on the other rigger or 1 flasher each rigger  

If the temps 75 ft to 50 ft ,  1 line  on each rigger and #5 Chinook diver . .

40 to 60ft temp  1 spoon each rigger , And slide diver 

Staging kings 1 j plug each rigger . 

I prefer just riggers if possible . Better maneuvering and easier  all around . 

And easier to net fish 

And man , it sure looked and felt like fall out there .

I go no more than 45 min , but more like 30. 

Can't tell you how many times lure  

came back with hooks foulded or tangled ,weeds , etc. Even being carefull. 

It wasn't that bad 

On the other hand this morning wasn't great . 

Was almost no wind on shore . So I figured I'd give it a go . The farther I went out , the worse it got with the North west wind . Made one pass at 120 . I ran go for broke 2 flashers only .  Same Bullfrog went off at 100 . Bait head skld up leader no fish and that was it . 

One boat was next to me and I think he hooked one but I could not tell . 

It was iffy from the beginning. 

Which is why I bought the boat I bought , so I could easily fish alone . 

After my guy cancelled I went out Solo to beat the wind and rain . 

Found a good screen 120 to 150  and worked it . 

Temp was way down . 55 deg at 115 ft of cable 

I went 3 for 5 . All good kings landed . Best was a 18# king .Deepest hit was 125 ft.  

3 shots on a Bullfrog Glo 11" flasher and Gary D rig  . That's been my best flasher this year . It's usually white but they won't hit it . Also got a double on 2 stacked spoons , A Carbon , and Glo Frog . 

It was lonely out there this morning , nobody's lines to cut off 

According to the " experts " the world was supposed to burst into flames by now . 

Hey , now that I think about , maybe it has . And we are all dead and we are in hell . The way the country is now , it sure seems like it . 

As for me , unfortunately, I did not cut anyone off either. But next time I will make a concerted effort and try harder . 

I did have a few boats bearing down on me and make me turn off . I'm thinking about having a paint ball gun onboard and firing a few rounds on those that need it .

It sure would add to the fun 😊 😊

Not me . 

I keep my boat at my cottage 

I was out solo 

First light ,80 ft hit on a big bullfrog flasher rips out some line and gone . Put it back down 20 min later release and nothing . Trolled around for a while and got pushed out  so I decided to head north . carbon goes , rod bounces a bit and gone , put it back down 5 min later 18# king 

And  a Skippy on a Glo frog slide diver . 

He Gator , did you cut anyone off this week ? 🤣

The migration has begun 

7 hours ago, ShawnJ said:

Went out for a quick evening trip after waiting on the lake to settle down. Fished 80 to 210 fow. Only saw bait in 185 and 195 fow down 60 to 90. Fished 630 till dark and only ended up with one small king on a mag green glow alwive spoon. Anyone else have better luck than us today/ tonight?

I got 2 small fish in 80 to 110 

21 hours ago, Sk8man said:

The main problem here is the myopic way we are looking at the picture. The Earth as we know it is radically changing.  It is headed at least in the short run for a much warmer climate possibly followed by another ice age as has been the case multiple times before. If you step back and look at the larger picture - many things are disappearing from the earth including billions of fish, birds, insects, mammals, reptiles etc. For many species the temperature tolerances have already been exceeded.The total picture is much greater than just the size of fish decreasing. The planet itself is on the way out in terms of the way things have been in our lifetime and man's activities may have increased the rate of change; but not the process itself as it appears to be an evolutionary process of the Earth itself. A lot of folks just don't want to look at the reality of this stuff.

All this has absolutely nothing to do with the King situation we are talking about in LO . 

The invasive  Zebra mussels filtered out the base of the food chain and the lake could not support the massive bait supply it once had .And a lot of the reason we had so much bait was from all the phosphorus  from fertilizers and laundry detergents , etc back then . Which if you remember was the reason salmon were stocked to begin with . Remember the lake surface shimmering with dead alwive and the huge piles  on the eastern  shores they used payloaders to remove ? 

The lake ecosystem has evolved because of that , not global warming. 

Look at what the gobies have done to the Smallmouth fishing . A complete turnaround from what it once was . 

I have stacked for years and there are things you have to watch out for.  

If the top lure is not back far enough , it can tangle with the lower line by grabbing the blowback of the top line  so keep a lead of at least 15 ft . 

If your riggers are fast when you send a flasher down it will come back towards the ball more than the spoon above  on the way down and tangle with the top line . 

When I stack I loosen the drags enough so as to keep the lines tight and there isn't a lot of bow to the line  on the way down to create tangles . My riggers are slow and I still sometimes stop it on the way down every 15 ft or so to let the lines straighten out . Especially if there is a flasher below . Which I don't do anymore because or tangles. 

Also a single hook lure on the stacker has less chance to hook the lower on a release . This happens more than I would like . A fish hits the bottom lure and the top lure grabs the line as it clears back . 

I Usually stack 20 ft apart and run say 1 rigger at 70 . 

The other at 80 . 

So I have 80 , 70 , and 60 covered and have vertical separation to avoid tangles on turns . Especially running big flashers 

I beg to differ 

The average size of browns is down the same as Kings and Rainbows 

A good indication of that is the LOC leaderboard for both spring and summer of this year . 

This spring they had a hard time getting 20 places on the board . That's unheard of in the past . You can blame the cormerants or the stream guys all you want but some of the fish survive all that and should grow to the normal sizes we have seen in the past .

I have 12# cannonballs 

I had a Fish hawk and now a depth raider with same cannonball . 

There is a little more blow back with the coated but not enough to make a difference . The probe is smaller on the depth raider . I don't think it's noticeable till you get down past 90 ft. And that's the rigger I run my flashers on which adds to it  . 

I'm very happy with the depth raider so far at half the price . But we will see in the long run . 

The bass are there , not as many but bigger.  Much bigger . 

We use to go to Sodus and Fair Haven and drift 10 to 25 ft with 1/8 hand tied brown bucktails and do well . I go to the same spots now and don't get a hit where we use to catch 100 bass in an afternoon . 

I fish the outlets of the bays and tribs now with good luck but once the water gets warm , they roam the lake. And they are deeper .  

Go Bills ,good job . 

The last 2 weeks has been pretty consistent for us targeting inside kings . We get 2 to 6 each time with some more hits . 

Glo Frog , Doctored 42 second copper back Mag , Carbon for spoons 

11" Bullfrog and Green Dot white glo Spin Dr towing my rigs . 

But mostly spoons . 

Fish sizes are down across the board by like 30% from years ago . 

The kings have length but don't have girth . Look at old pics . 

The bigger browns use to be obese. An 11# fish gets you on the board now. 

Many guys are fishing offshore and we can't fill the LOC board with 10# plus steelhead . 

I'm hearing the bait has rebounded but by how much ? Certainly not even close to the levels of the 70s , 80s ,and 90s . I see a lot of bait inshore in my area and even that is concentrated to certain areas . But I don't see the huge schools offshore like I use to .

My theory about the kings acclimation  to LO might be somewhat true but what about the Browns and steelhead ? 

Bw carefull leaning over  the side of the boat . 

I caught a real nice pike in the mountains and netted it and pulled it in  and took hooks out in the bottom of the boat . Leaned over the side to revive it.  The floor was slippery  from its slime and my feet slipped out from under me and I fell overboard . I could hear my I'mbuddy in the boat right next to me  laughing while I was underwater . My boatmate grabbed my from behind by my belt and hauls me back into the boat like a carp . 

What , we a 15 generations from the first stockings ? 

With all the natural reproduction and the crossbreeding of Nat and Stocked fish , I feel there is some acclimation to LO . 

These aren't you Grandpas fish we are catching now.  These are LO kings , not Pacific ocean kings . 

I'm for some sort of reintroduction . 

Mark them well and see what happens . Bur DEC sounds reluctant to do that because of fears something could happen to 

When you are in a trolling situation and there a bunch of boats around going every which way  , you can throw the rules of the road in the lake. 

4 hours ago, Force of one said:

What is a Gary d rig?

Only the best Salmon trolling lure ever invented 🎣🎣🎣

I find the best thing you can do is have the pliers handy , net them , get the hooks out and get them back in the water in seconds . I rarely take pics anymore because of that . Sometimes I don't take them out of the water and rip the hooks out with the net  to get them gone ASAP . 

And don't put your hands in their gills so they don't bleed.