Ruff Rider Sodus ProAm Report 2016 July 14-17

[TOP SECRET]

I'm beat, but wanted to give a quick update on how the ProAm went. Pics will follow later....

Thursday:

Jack from Echo One and "Little Wayne" from Reel Outlaw (not to be confused with "Big Daddy Wayne" from Green Dolphin), joined Theresa and I to prefish. After seeing all of the great reports from out West we decided to run west. We ran to 26W nearly out front of Irondequoit, the farthest west we have ever ran and it was a haul! The weather started out nice, but quickly turned into a strong west wind and large fast moving waves. We had almost non stop action, but mostly lakers with scattered kings, but most not large. We worked our way back east trolling mostly 100ft-250ft. Water temperature was ~50F down 50ft over 150fow to start. By the end of the day, we had trouble finding temp down 100' over 150fow! Our 600 copper took our only 20+ king that day on a bloody death spinny with purple squids and cut bait. It would be the ONLY fish we took on cut bait all weekend, even though other teams hammered them on cut bait. We had no real all star, just a steady pick. Every rod fired at least once. We probably had 20 bites, but half were lakers if we dropped any lure into cold water.

Nothin but lips!

Friday:

Beautiful day on the lake, but the rough lake the day before took its toll on our team. Jack stayed in to recoup and Theresa slept down below for a good part of the trip. My goal was to use the flat lake to scout. I trolled from 80fow to 250fow and was hitting good fish to the west of port, not quite to Pultneyville, where I had been fishing the previous weekend. Knowing those fish were there, I didn't want to bother them too much and headed north. My plan was to find colder water as the inside had 60F down 110' over 150fow. I trolled North, marking fish all the way to ~300fow. Temp was the same. I knew that somewhere deeper, the water had to stabilize/cool, so I trolled.... and trolled... and trolled. My screen was "king free" from 350fow to 750fow. At 750fow, the temp was within 1 degree of what it was in shallow... I was dumbfounded. I trolled all the way back in to the East not marking another king until 250fow. There were a lot of steelies out in 750 down 20ft, but I had a lot of trouble getting them to bite reliably... but it was a back up plan. Once I got back into 250fow to the East, there was a pocket of smaller kings that I hit... another backup plan.

Saturday:

Well, it's the Sodus Pro AM... of course the weatherman was wrong and we were greeted with 3-4s from the west. We spent the first 40 minutes running West before saying forget it and fishing the spot I had fished the previous weekend. We tried trolling West and were getting rocked pretty good. Finally we turned around and trolled with them for a break from the battering. It wasn't until 9:15 that the deep rigger took off and started SCREAMING line. Theresa was on it and brought in a 26+lb king! We were stoked, but knew we needed more. So we turned and tried trolling back to our spot... due to the wind and current, it took twice as long to troll West as it did East and we wasted a lot of time trying to troll back. We started to pick up and run West (slowly) so we could troll East. We picked up a 22lb king, and a 10lb king on each pick up and return... all trolling East. Then the bite died and we quite frankly were pretty beaten up, so we just kept trolling East towards port to maximize our fishing time. We finally put out a deep diver to try to get near bottom and were rewarded with a small steelie. That was it for the day, 4 bites and 4 fish. We thought we were in trouble, knowing there were a lot of fish out there, but thought we were in good shape for the "3 Fish" tourney with two decent fish to weigh. At weigh in, we were somewhere around 8th with nearly half the field within one fish of us. Team Roll With It (from Arneys Marina, yay!) were in first with a 40 point lead. Team Dipsy Ranger were in second with less than a one fish lead and were ahead of us by 3 lbs in the "3 Fish" thanks to a monster 30lb king!

Saturday Night:

Time to plan for the next day. Do we go back to our spot that produced the big kings and get one more in hopes of taking 3 fish, or do we go to our spot to the East with numerous small fish, try to box 6 and then run West to get a big guy? I decided to start East with a plan to run back West if it didn't work.

Sunday:

We left port and ran straight out and headed slightly East to our spot. We set down and had a loaded screen. Fishing began and our 120' rigger with a spinny/fly and a black spoon with a glow back, silver ladderback front with glow eye cheated 9' up was ON FIRE. We quickly landed 3 fish, all in the 7-10lb range and then dropped a smaller fish behind the boat. The next fish was a nicer fish and Theresa was on the rod. It came up to the surface went nuts and gone We reeled the line in and the spoon was missing, the leader was missing, the alberta clipper was missing! Either it broke, or I forgot to clip it shut. It took us the next two hours to find a spoon that would work. A green with white dot glow back spoon finally started to fire, only problem was, each fish was tiny and not legal. We finally made the decision to run back West. We setup in 120fow and started trolling North to find some fish. The screen was blank, nothing was firing, and I thought we were in trouble. Finally about noon, we hit 230fow and the screen lights up with big hooks. Our 120 rigger fires and Jack has a slob on. We can't budge it. We pull the starboard side lines, throw a trolling bag out, and start to circle as slowly as possible. 30 minutes later, we finally get the fish up with a hook in its mouth and the line wrapped. What we thought was 30lb+ turned out to be 19lbs. We were bummed, but we were back on fish. We started circling that spot with only an hour to go. We had a shot, but never hooked up. We circled again and the 120 rigger started screaming. We landed another teenage king and had a box of 5. We were still marking good fish, but ran out of time and headed in. At weigh in, the fish we lost hurt us and dropped us to 4th place, which we were stoked about! We missed 3 Fish by 3lbs and tied Hook-n-Up for 2nd in the AMs down to the tenth of an ounce!

Shark Tank Pro Winner

I also really enjoyed the "3 Fish" part of the tournament this year. Sometimes the ProAm can become a brown fest and it gave us an option since we don't fish browns At the end of the day, we could have basically fished with one rod during the tournament. Our 120ft rigger took every fish except 2. I think the fish we were on were all down below 100 and our dipseys and copper just weren't getting down deep enough. My probe rigger stops reading at 110ft and never took a fish even when we had it up high going for steelies.

Overall, it was a great tournament and a ton of fun as usual. If you haven't fished it before, you should really consider it next year. Just remember to have fun and not take it too seriously!

Edited July 19, 2016 by Ruff Rider

[blueghost1]

Good job Nick!

[whaler1]

Great report as always

[hooknup]

Good report.  We fished to the east both days of the tournament.  My wife landed a 27.7 lb king on day two.  I thought we had a good chance to get $1000 for that fish.  However, that wasn't the case.  Someone got a bigger one!

[TOP SECRET]

Nice job getting 3rd place and it was nice meeting you! We will be gunning for ya next year

[hooknup]

Nice meeting you too.

 

Here is a pic of our big one

[hooknup]

our big one

[TOP SECRET]

Awesome fish! Just imagine... most fish they say will gain 5lbs in the next month... with the amount of 25lb fish we saw this weekend... I am super excited for August!

[reeldilemma33]

Awesome pic Nick thank you! I recognized all the pink rods in the back of the boat in the bay we were 2 minutes late 2:02 through the pier heads lol crew and I were bummed (not that we were gonna win or place) but went 8-9 and curious where we placed with the field. Thanks again for the pic

[rbtking618]

Thx for the nice report

Sent from my SM-G920V using Lake Ontario United mobile app

[TOP SECRET]

Awesome pic Nick thank you! I recognized all the pink rods in the back of the boat in the bay we were 2 minutes late 2:02 through the pier heads lol crew and I were bummed (not that we were gonna win or place) but went 8-9 and curious where we placed with the field. Thanks again for the pic

We just figured you slowed down once they saw your number, bummer!

[TOP SECRET]

Btw, one thing I forgot to mention was the steelie we caught had several gobies in its belly! First I have seen that...

[Yankee Troller]

Nice Report Nick!

[TOP SECRET]

Also, there is live feed video from the weekend on the Lake Ontario Fishing - Ruff Rider facebook group page. I for the life of me can't figure out how to link it here.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Ruff Rider

[bridget]

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Lake Ontario United mobile app

[bear]

nice