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Divemaster

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  • Real Name
    Sean
  • Biography
    Fish Lake Erie out of the port of Erie, PA for Lake Trout, Steelhead, Browns, Drum, and Pike
  • Location
    Pittsburgh, PA area
  • Interests
    Fishing (trolling, spin, and fly), Scuba Diving, and Fish Tanks
  • Occupation
    Fish Breeder

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  1. Glad I could help, you won't be disappointed with them for Walleye fishing. I fish the eastern basin of Erie myself, PA and NY waters.
  2. I've been using them for the past two years. I don't use plugs very often but when I do, there's always one or two Bay rats in my Spread. I use the chartreuse long-extra deep, Orange long-extra deep, and Purple long-deep. Those same three run on flatlines, boards, and wire Diver's have been producing Walleye, Steelhead, and Lakers the last two seasons.
  3. Thanks! Spring Lakers were a bit slower than usual for us but summer was on fire whenever we could get out.
  4. Thanks! Drum are such an underutilized sportfish. Hit like a freight train and take off running, even more fun when you can jig them in 8-20'. Even had a couple spool me with a 12lb leader! Our biggest this year was only a 9 pounder but in 2015 we boated a 10, 12, and 14.
  5. 2017 Bigwater Catches Haven't posted much here lately so I figured I'd share a few pictures from our season out on the bigwater this year. Our season ran from early April to early November (though, Oct. and Nov. we're totally dead) and we fished three of the Great Lakes this year including our home eastern Lake Erie and western Lake Ontario on our boat as well as central Lake Superior on Captain John Tomczyk's boat (Daybreak Charters, also highly recommended if you're looking for a great experience!). On Erie we trolled for Lakers, Drum, and White Bass and jigged for Drum and Walleye. Lake Ontario in early August was monster Steelhead trolling with plenty of small Chinook as bycatch. Lake Superior in late June was a great new place to fish for us and we caught a multitude of native Lakers. It's amazing how much variation Superior fish have since they're the original strains and have adapted specifically for the various environments of that lake. Another awesome season in the books, we'll be back at it again next April for Erie Lakers, but until then it's time to keep crushing them in streams and rivers! (We catch & release 95% of our trolled fish, but a few pictured below (the gill gripped ones) were kept for the grill.) Erie Lake Trout Wicked Lamprey wound Largest fish of Spring, 18 pounds 8.5# Walleye White Bass are welcome on our boat Superior Laker Bug-eyed Char 33" Lake Superior tank Awesome coloration Inshore Drum jigging 37" 23# Erie Laker Action was hot in July New PB Lake Trout, 38" 24#, eastern Lake Erie Some more jigged Drum Lake O Steel Bycatch Chinook 12 pound Steelshark
  6. Some 2016 Catches Some of my better catches from last year's boat fishing season. Spring Lake Trout on eastern Lake Erie and Summer Steelhead on Lakes Erie and Ontario. Plus some much welcome bycatch all year! 2017 is already out to a great start with some big Lakers, hoping to post some of them later on. Enjoy! First Laker of 2016 33", late April 34" fatty, early May 32" bycatch Walleye, late May 30" Pike from the propwash, mid June 28" Erie Steelhead, mid July First Pink Salmon, mid July SLOB Summer Laker 36" and 23+ pounds, mid July 29" Deepwater Drum First Chinook Salmon, late July Lake Ontario monster 12 pound Steelie, early August
  7. Haven't touched this thread in a while. We did decent on Steel last summer, three or four 2-5 fish days on Lake Erie and a pair of 4-5 fish days on Lake Ontario in the beginning of August. Not terrible for a couple of guys who just took up trolling on a whim a two years ago. Everything was trolling 3.0-4.0 mph, all on stingers and moonshines from 20-100' down in 70-550 FOW. Boated chromers from 1-14# and lost either a large Steelie or Atlantic (most likely the latter) in the 20-25# class on Lake O. Going to put more effort towards getting them slow this year, in the 1.6-2.0 mph range. Both because of the fumes and noise from using the main for fast trolling speeds kills us and also we can get into a nice mix bag of Steelhead, Pinks, Lakers, Walleye, White Bass, and Drum at lower speeds (vs. just Steelhead, White Bass, and rare Lakers at high speed). That said, has anyone tried using red or orange Dodgers with peanut flies for Steelhead? I've heard that's a popular rig for Cohos on Lake Michigan (I'm assuming Dodgers means only low speed trolling), and considering Steelhead love the same colors, I feel like that'd work well for them, too. A pink dodger/peanut or hoochie might put a few Pink Salmon in the net, too.
  8. Video won't work for me, but that grey fish just looks like a wild coloration Goldfish (yep, a naturally colored Eurasian GOLDfish isn't gold lol).
  9. Any of you guys ever go out with (or know anyone that has) any of these charters? http://www.chumbucketcharters.net http://www.troutscoutcharters.com http://www.bountyhunteralpena.com/index.html They all seem pretty affordable for 6-7 hour trips which would be a nice end to our week before heading home the next day. I also don't know anyone personally whose fished on Lake Huron, though, so I can't say how any of these guys are.
  10. Almost have everything worked out for this trip. Have a few days of charters on Superior for native Char, two for trolling and one for Stannard Rock jigging/casting/fly fishing. Plus a charter on the St. Mary's River one day to fly fish for Lake Huron-run Atlantic Salmon, as well as an extra two days built in to explore/shore fish the area in search of native Brook Trout and wild Browns in the creeks and Splake, Steelhead, Cohos, Pinks, etc. from beaches and piers. Hopefully the weather cooperates when we go up and the lake isn't rough all week after the 12 hour drive haha. I do have a question for you guys, though. We have an extra day at the end of our trip that we were originally just going to skip and go home to rest, but being the fish nut that I am we might use that extra day up there for another day of fishing instead. If we do use it to fish, we'd either do some shore fishing on the St. Mary's for more Atlantics, or potentially book a charter for a day on northern Lake Huron to experience a new lake and hopefully catch a nice mixed bag of Salmonids. Can anyone recommend any reliable charters for the northern Huron area? Alpena seems to be a pretty popular port, but I'm sure there's some other good ones too. Again, Lake Trout are the primary target, but some Browns, Steelies, and Atlantics in the mix would be fine too!
  11. Lead-free weights and line question Hey guys. Does anyone have a good online source for buying lead free weights? Going to need multiple styles, but most importantly I'm currently looking for 10# (maybe 12#) cast iron downrigger balls with fins. Not having much success finding any yet. I'm also looking for snap weights or regular bell weights in the 1-5oz range (probably nickel or tin, I'd guess) to use on my board rods for more versatility than the 10 color leadcore I used last season. On that note. Those of you who use snap weights, what's your line setup? As I said, I used 10 colors of leadcore last season on my planer board rods and felt it was very limiting as to how deep you can fish (even with various lures, I can still only get in the 50-75' range). With snap weights, I'll be able to go as light as an ounce or even no weight for 1-10' subsurface Steelhead and White Bass up to 5oz on a slow troll to bounce bottom down to 140' for Lakers. I'm thinking along the lines of 200yds of 50# braid mainline with 200yds of filler 40-50# mono backing should work well, but wanted to get the thoughts of you guys first. I know braid can be an issue with fleas in the summer in general, but I'll mainly be fishing eastern Lake Erie, which doesn't have many of the smaller more annoying fleas, so I should be fine there unless I take a trip to Lake Ontario (which I mainly do in the spring and fall anyway). Thanks for the help! -Sean
  12. Earl, I don't believe that mooching rods have triggers considering the reel is on the bottom of the rod, maybe you're thinking of the conventional casting rod setups they use for the non-trolling mooching technique out west. On a side note, I measured my downrigger rod holders yesterday and they're much shorter than I remembered, only about 7.5", which means that the 8.5" butts on the mooching rods will be suitable. So, I'm thinking that the setups I'll be going with will be the Shimano Convergence rods in 10'6", medium power slow action and the Daiwa M-One UTD reels with 25 pound mono.
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