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Trolling for browns


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After my 3rd skunk in a row on Conesus, I'm ready to switch it for a bit!

Last year around this time we took the boat (16' Duranatic ) and casted for a bit just to see what was out there and to my surprise found a bunch of browns and landed one.

I have never fished Lake ontario on my boat besides that one time, and it's not setup for kings out deep - I can run two dipsys on my musky/pike rods for now though.

For anyone that fishes for them, what depths should I be looking for them?

Any suggestions on what to use? I know we caught the last one on a RatlTrap and had lots of follows on spinners. - I've yet to use my Dipsys seriously though - only tried it once on Conesus to check it out.

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You can usually find browns this time of the year where the thermocline intersects the bottom,approx 60'-80' fow.Find bait on your locator and troll just off the bottom,we have had luck trolling medium sized Michigan stinger spoons in natural alewives 

( black silver) uv black tuxedo,among others.Hope this helps.

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Just now, Hawkeye50 said:

You can usually find browns this time of the year where the thermocline intersects the bottom,approx 60'-80' fow.Find bait on your locator and troll just off the bottom,we have had luck trolling medium sized Michigan stinger spoons in natural alewives 

( black silver) uv black tuxedo,among others.Hope this helps.

Thanks - I have a mini, and size 0 diver now - the setups I was going to use (since I dont have a designated trolling setup yet) was my 13fishing A3 and 8' Musky H 1-8oz rod, and 13fishing Concept C with an 7'3 1oz MH rod. Not sure how that will be with dipsys. I think the smaller rod could handle the mini diver fine, and the bigger rod, probably ok with the size 0 (50# braid on the larger one - 30 on the smaller) - but I don't know if I should push it with a larger dipsy to get deeper. Thoughts?

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Where 60* meets the bottom is usually the ticket for this time of year. Even if that happens to be 60-80 fow you don't need to fish super deep to catch them. We do well for browns on short to med leadcore setups (3-7 colors), with stickbaits and spoons. You can run clip-on or inline weights to get these down deeper too. 

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Find the area where 62* water meets the bottom and fish inside and outside of that zone. Black and silver spoons in stingray and smaller sizes ( mags do have their days). Riggers, divers and lead cores are best. Skim the bottom with a rigger or two. Cheaters take a lot of browns especially the later in the summer you get.


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10 minutes ago, GAMBLER said:

Find the area where 62* water meets the bottom and fish inside and outside of that zone. Black and silver spoons in stingray and smaller sizes ( mags do have their days). Riggers, divers and lead cores are best. Skim the bottom with a rigger or two. Cheaters take a lot of browns especially the later in the summer you get.


Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United mobile app

Unfortunately I don't have a FishHawk for the temp - I am going to try with a couple dipsys this week with my musky setup(s) - bought a few spoons from F&S today to give it a shot

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Well, we took the boat out this morning as the marine forecast looked good and I wanted to try trolling dipsys. Got out to 100 FOW and it was a bit too rough out there for my little boat. Going out was fine, running along the coast, or going back against the wind, not great. Water seemed fine around 40 -50 FOW, its getting out farther the wind seemed to pick up, didn't feel too comfortable. For anyone that was out today, how was that condition of the water to you guys? I think my boat should be a bit bigger before going that far out again. What I didn't even think about was how much gas I ended up going through out there, went out to 100 FOW, spent maybe 45 min out on the lake, and then tooled around in Bradocks for some bass for a bit and ended up using 3/4 of a 6gallon tank.

IMG_4090.JPG

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My little boat (17 footer) has a 15 gallon tank and I carry a 5 gallon spare when I fish big water.


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I’ve been out off Oswego all morning in my 22’. It was not small craft friendly. Got thrown into the side a few times. Even wore my pfd!

Calming down a bit now but still a little lumpy out in 400fow


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On 8/2/2019 at 3:41 PM, GAMBLER said:

Find the area where 62* water meets the bottom and fish inside and outside of that zone. Black and silver spoons in stingray and smaller sizes ( mags do have their days). Riggers, divers and lead cores are best. Skim the bottom with a rigger or two. Cheaters take a lot of browns especially the later in the summer you get.


Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United mobile app

Hi Brian, just curius about your average speed when you fish for Brown?

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On 8/2/2019 at 3:52 PM, Dan M said:

Unfortunately I don't have a FishHawk for the temp - I am going to try with a couple dipsys this week with my musky setup(s) - bought a few spoons from F&S today to give it a shot


You can prolly figure out where the temp is for them by the other boats out there. We had a tough time finding salmon Sat so we moved in shallow looking for browns. Saw a couple boats in 80fow and figured that was where the temp was for them. Dropped my probe in 75fow and sure enough 60* right on bottom. Anyone inside of 100fow right now is most likely looking for browns.

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8 minutes ago, FishingFool34 said:


You can prolly figure out where the temp is for them by the other boats out there. We had a tough time finding salmon Sat so we moved in shallow looking for browns. Saw a couple boats in 80fow and figured that was where the temp was for them. Dropped my probe in 75fow and sure enough 60* right on bottom. Anyone inside of 100fow right now is most likely looking for browns.

thanks - I'll probably have to wait til they get a bit closer then, 80 fow was still a little rough for my boat, doable, but I didn't feel great about it.

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