Mikeyman104

We were in the lead with our 9.59lb laker for a bit, but the winning fish was a 11.76lb laker

They say it's better to be lucky than good, and that's exactly what happened for us this weekend. My buddy and I were looking forward to chasing after some fish after he had just gotten his boat in the water from it's winter nap. The weather almost made it feel like winter still with a decent west wind and temps around 48 with scattered showers on Saturday. With the weather reports all over, we weren't sure how the morning was going to shape up so we didn't get on the lake till about 830 after deciding to give it a go. Plan was to focus on the west side of the lake out of the waves and wind. There wasn't much happening on Saturday as we fished till about 2ish with only 2 small lakers making it to the boat and losing another. The 2 we did get were probably about 2-3 lbs and bit a Hinkley and a death trap with some home made spin 'n glows my buddy rigged up. Sunday was much of the same weather wise. Less rain and slightly higher temp but was I was still rocking my ice fishing jacket on the boat. We started out around 8 by pulling some copper cause what we did the day before obviously wasnt working to well. On the copper we had about 4-5 bites but only managed to land one which was about 5 lbs. Great fish by our low standards but nothing worth entering for the derby. We switch tactics and throw out some more Hinkleys on dipseys and land a couple small lakers in about a 15 min span. After that it went quiet with no action for a few hours. We switch tactics again and basically give up hope of getting something for the derby and wanted to catch a brown or Atlantic to take home and eat. We put some more spoons out and bumped our speed up a bit trying to entice a sucker for dinner. We were still fishing shallow compared to where we usually fish, but had a downrigger with a reel rage purple ale at 35 down with about a 30' lead. I'm driving the boat at about 1230 and the rain had just made a quick pass again. My buddy gets up to grab the downrigger rod but doesn't say anything. I turn back to see him fighting a fish but don't think much of it cause it seems like he's bringing it in pretty easily. I got back to driving until I hear a "...Mike!?!?!". I take that as my cue to grab the net and go to the back of the boat. I can now see that it's a good fish but still not thinking much of it as my buddy walks backwards to the front of the boat so I can net it. Get it in the boat and of course the lure pops out when its landed. We can now see that it's a nice fish but I pick it up and guess it weighs around 7-8 lbs. Buddy thinks it's more but is worried about weighing it and keeping it out of the water too long, cause we weren't planning on keeping lakers. We grab a scale and it's showing about nine and a half pounds. We think, alright we should at least go enter this thing to say we entered a fish because someone had to have entered something bigger than the weights we were seeing yesterday. We throw the fish in my buddy's very small cooler and pull the rest of the gear in. This fish is basically shoved into the cooler cause it's so big, yet this cooler works for about 99% of the fish we catch. We run up to Stivers and all we can think is they must think we're trying to weigh a dink with this cute little cooler. We pull the fish out and lay it on the board for the length and it comes in at 30in. It's starting to seem like a legit fish now. He then puts it on the scale and it's reads 9.59lbs. Mind you, neither of us had looked at the leader board yet so we're still oblivious. The folks are smiling and saying great fish but we still don't ve a clue. One of the folks at the station says, "well this changes everything" and we're like what do you mean? He says we're in first and neither of us could believe it. Lots of fist bumps and "holy sh!ts" were exchanged. Here were these 2 knuckleheads who if they dont get skunked it's considered a good day, but are now leading the Seneca Lake Trout Derby. Lots of laughing and just shaking our heads in disbelief as we head back to his place. Fast forward to today and we're just hoping it holds and refreshing the live standings tracker frequently. Alas it wouldn't hold, but we did end up coming in second overall with the 1st place laker. Congrats to Josh with his winning fish! Still very surreal and fortunate for us, but heck of a good time even with the lousy weather on the days we fished. Thanks to the folks that put on the event and thanks to my buddy for taking me out, but I just might retire after this one cause it will be hard to top 😄

Went out on Oneida for the opening of walleye. After getting the kids ready and off to school in the morning I got rods in around 9:30 to a pretty stiff east wind. Water was 49 at the start of the day and 52 by the time I called it at 2:30. Started out trolling some stick baits without much luck but did happen to get this guy, which I believe is a brown but others I've shown think it might be an Atlantic? Either way, was cool to get and was tossed back after the pic. Think it's a brown or Atlantic? After not much happening with sticks, I switched to some worms harnesses and got 3 short eyes but was slow going with no keepers.

Neat catch! New meaning to a banded fish.

I was up in Cape a couple of weeks ago pulling worm harnesses on bottom bouncers and couldn't keep the goby's off. As soon as the weight hit the bottom a goby was usually on it. Switched to trolling with stickbaits but no luck. Any tips for keeping the worm harnesses free of gobys or just have to deal with them?

Made an afternoon trip out on Owasco yesterday. Got to Emerson around noon to a surprisingly full lot of trailers for such a windy day. Worker at the booth said there was a tournament going on so hope everyone got into them. I got out to the lake to a very strong west wind so ran over to the west side of the lake to try and seek some shelter and it looked like all the other boats had the same idea. I had some worms in my fridge left over from some dock fishing that I did with the kids so i figured I'd use those up and try to find some perch in the bays on the north west side. Found a good screen in 25-30 FOW and had the trolling motor working overtime in spot lock because of the wind. Put a worm on a drop shot and had a decent pick of panfish for the next couple of hours. What surprised me was how many 4-5" rock bass I caught while only getting a few small perch. If I had some fatheads I probably could have had a better perch bite, but was still fun catching fish. Did get a couple of nice sunfish and the color on these fish was just outstanding. Didn't look like it belonged in fresh water. After running through my worms, decided to give trolling a try and found 50F about 50-55' down. Trolled for another couples of hours seeing lots of bait on the west side and some decent screens/marks, but only got 1 small rainbow on a dipsey out 130' on a 3 setting with a hinckley 666. Tried spoons, cowbells and gambler rigs on the downriggers but couldn't find a bite. Usually have decent success with these, but do baits/colors/speeds for lakers usually change as the weather starts to cool off? I'd usually go to Oneida this time of year but was way to windy for there so trying to get a better understanding of fall trolling on the finger lakes.

Took the day off to go fishing and Owasco greeted me with a sunny sky, nice gentle breeze out of the north, green waters, and a quiet boat ramp around 9am. Set up on the north end around some drop offs to try my hand at jigging up some lakers. I've done this in the past with a paddle tail swimbait and a big jib, and has ok luck as it's not my strong point (not sure any type of fishing is my strong point ). I was just fishing solo so figured I'd give it a shot and I had few followers around 80fow but no takers and couldn't find a good screen to really get any consistent action. Ended up moving to mid lake on the east side and set up trolling. Set up with 2 downriggers and a dipsey around the 70-90 fow mark and found the thermocline was about 55' down. Only trolled for a couple hours but ended with 2 lakers and a rainbow. Both lakers came on a seneca special death trap with a bullfrog grambler rig that was fishing the marks on the bottom. The rainbow came on a uv/purple michigan stinger on the dipsey out 137' on #3. Ended up seeing a good amount of bait and marks around mid lake, just couldn't get many to commit. Still better than working though.

After doing some more reading online, I think I got it figured out. My 2 trolling motor batteries and my Garmin battery were all separate, except for the fact that I had a 3 bank ProMariner battery charger on all these batteries. I wouldn't have thought that this charger was essentially back feeding the noise from the trolling motor to the Garmin battery, but apparently it did because once I disconnected the bank charger from everything, no more interference from the trolling motor. Thanks all for the responses and help troubleshooting this issue!

Took the boat out of oswego last Friday and the interference was pretty bad still. I wasn't catching anything, so I played around with the settings in the fish finder with no significant changes. However, I did determine that the interference is coming only when the bow mounted trolling motor propeller is engaged. At low speeds it isn't bad, but at high speeds, which I needed to keep me steering properly in the waves, it was significant. The fish finder is on its own dedicated battery, and the 24v bow mounted trolling motor is on its own batteries too. I added the ferrite core and the tranducer cable isn't next to any other power cables. Also, I checked the 3 amp fuse in the trolling motor head and put a meter to the fuse and it was still good. The terrova has a transducer in it but I don't have it connected to anything. Was reading about adding a grounding wire for the trolling motor but sounds like this needs to be done at a Minn kota service center. Anyone have any experience trying this?

Jigging for lakers is fun so I can only imagine this is a blast. Very cool and well done!

Posts like yours and others on this site have helped my learning curve tremendously, so I figure the least I can do is to try and tell others what I'm seeing/doing when I'm on the water. While my fishing style and techniques may not be the most effective, I at least try to make them as honest and as accurate as I can.

Bit late with the report but hit up Owasco Saturday morning. Me and a buddy were thinking of hitting Ontario out of Mexico that morning but weather was looked iffy so we were hoping to stay dry more towards the south. The didn't end up happening either because we got to Emerson at about 5:45 and were greeted by a quick downpour and about a 5-10 mph south wind. Rain hit on and off for the next hours or so, but we got set up on the north east side of the lake making a trolling south in about 80 fow. Got the first rod down at about 55' with a hinckley 88 that fired before the second rod was in. Fish ended up coming unbuttoned about 10' from the boat but we figured this was a good sign of things to come. Ended up trolling the east side for about another hour and a half with nothing. The skies were getting brighter and we were starting to dry out, but with the humidity as high as it was and the sketchy weather reports, I didn't want to wander too far from the ramp in case we had to run back if a random storm kicked up. They are just fish after all and we were releasing everything today. We trolled over to the west side of the lake and found some good marks and some lakers that were willing to play. We had good action from about 9-10 while landing 5 lakers with one double. Fish were still in that 70-90 FOW range and the hungry ones we found were near the bottom. Best of the day for us was a hammerhead glow 2 face cowbell paired with a wonderbread gambler rig. This pairing took 5 fish as the hinckley took 2 others. All bites came on the riggers as our dipseys never fired once and our down speeds were around 1.8 for most the day. The fish were hitting so good for a while that we started changing out set ups and experimenting seeing if we could find some other good combos, but apparently we were cocky and the fish put us in our place by not getting another bite. Called it around noon going 7/8 with the biggest laker being about 6-7 lbs. Lots of weeds and grass on the surface, but didn't find any fleas fortunately. Think the limited the success of the dipseys was because every time we pulled them they were green with weeds. Surface temps were around 72F and down 50 was about 50F.

Afternoon trip out of fair haven today. Wind reports looked like it would be a pretty easy going ride but it decided to lie today. We left the dock around 2pm to be greeted by a nice chop. Set up lines around 100 fow going north and had a quick release that didn't stay connected. A NE wind turned the chop into some decent waves and trolling into them became more difficult to maintain heading and speed to decided to make a turn. On the turn took a nice 18lb king on some meat in about 140fow down 135ish. Water temp at the top was 65 and down near the bottom was still around 55 but was marking lots of bait and fish between 120-150fow. Around 6:30 the waves were still growing do we decided to call it after getting a small coho on a dipsey while it was still going out, but probably hit around 180 out on a 2 setting. All in all a good father's day.

That's what we ended up guessing too. Told my buddy to bring his ice fishing camera next time to see what's going on down there

Went out with a buddy today and left the dock around 9am. Got out to around 100f fow and went north with a decent south wind at our backs. Not much to write home about on the screen so went out to 175 and turned back in. Waves were probably 2-3' going into them and it made it much more challenging keeping speed going back towards shore. There was a group of boats all hanging around 120 fow (+-20') and that's where we found our best looking screens too. We washed lures for about 5 hours trying to catch a silver fish on the marks we could see, but to no avail. Wanting to get the skunk out of the boat, we put down some cowbells and we were grateful for a laker to oblige with getting rid of our stench. Ended up calling it quits around 3:30 with 2 lakers helping us out as the wind was calming down too. What was baffling us is that the screen had tons of small marks on it. Lakers and larger fish on the bottom had good solid arches but there were bunches of these smaller ones anywhere from 20-100 down over 120. We threw just about every spoon we had at them along with some meat and even a jointed rapala. Anyone have any idea what these might be?

Thanks all! Trolling motor is on it's own 24v system and Garmin is on it's own 12v system so didn't think they would really interfere with each other. Only got the one transducer on the back that goes to the Garmin and the transducer on the trolling motor isn't plugged into anything right now. Actually went out on Oneida last night and while running the trolling motor I didn't have any interference that I could notice. However, I was only in 15 FOW so think that's the bigger reason i didn't notice anything. We'll see what happens when I go out again in a deeper body of water.

The fish finders. The TM has a universal one built into it but it's not connected to any display or anything.

Nicely done! I too thought you meant something different when you mentioned walking around for heads. Thought maybe walking around looking for a spot to go after bullheads more

Update: after googling and checking my set up, it looks like i forgot to install a ferrite bead so I'll toss that on the transducer cable near the head unit and hopefully that helps clear up the picture.

My bow mounted trolling motor causes a crazy amount of interference with my Garmin Echomap. I have to turn the gain way down to get some clarity but was wondering if any one has any tips to help limit the inference. The pic is when I was using my trolling motor to move and then when I stopped.

Was finally able to get the boat out today. Wind and weather didn't look great but was looking to try out my new kicker and see how the rigger wiring would work out. Meet a buddy at Emerson and launched around 11 to a decent west wind. Seeing it was a shakedown, I just wanted to make sure everything was running right. This was the first time trolling on the new to me boat so set up with a small laker spread on the west side of the lake trying to stay out of the wind. Didnt see much on the screen but everything was running and working good so I wasn't going to complain. When we finally did see some stuff on the screen it was some bait balls out in about 160 fow right on the bottom. Didnt feel like dropped the riggers that deep so trolled over it still searching for a bite. As we got more comfortable with the set up, we trolled for another half mile and nothing. Satisfied with how the trolling (other than no bites), we went back to the bait we saw with the intent on jigging. The issue is that I didn't have rods set up for that so used my trolling rods to jig. Turns out, they aren't that great for jigging (shocker), but it did worked well enough as we went 2/8 with 1oz jigs and some paddle tail swim baits. We got some bites on unconventional gear and even landed a few so we were happy. Called it a day at 230 and headed back satisfied and cold. Only thing I couldn't figure out was my fish finder showing a lot of interference from my trolling motor when in anchor mode and jigging.

For sure. Oswego county issued a local state of emergency for it. Schools and daycares now closed. If you want to see what the totality is like, go outside for about 4 minutes around midnight then go back inside.

Hope the fishing is good for folks who plan to be out during the eclipse. Think it'd be pretty interesting to be on the water during the event. Also, I'll be curious to hear any fishing reports that come out of it and if any unusual fish activity happens. I'd be neat if the fish start feeding like it's dusk/dawn when the totality is going on. Best of luck to anyone who can get out fishing during it!