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Billy V

Charter Captain
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Everything posted by Billy V

  1. I'll mirror what Yankee Troller said about the Saltist. I've used the Tekota in the past on other boats and always thought it was THE reel for this type of fishing. But the Saltist has really impressed me so far. We had enough of a test with them this past weekend that I'd feel comfortable saying that it's neck and neck with the Tekota and may prove to be even better with the higher gear ratio. We were able to bring lines in a lot faster than we ever could before, and that's going to prove valuable come tournament time. Definitely worth a look-see! As far as rod holders go, yes those are the new Cannon Dual-Axis rod holders and they are SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!
  2. We fished West of port in 50-180 FOW and put a beating on the Lakers and took a few Kings today as well. We got a late start after having the boat trailered to Wilson from Krenzer's in Sodus, but once we got out to 50 FOW the rods started popping with some chunky Lakers. Mostly a spoon bite (DW Green Alewife, Glow Corn were good), but we also took a few whacks on a Chartreuse Splatter Spinny/Sigg's Ghost fly combo fished off a wire diver out 140' on a #2 setting. 2.0-2.5 mph down speed on the new Cannon IntelliTroll (VERY nice by the way) was our best speed. We worked the inside water and played with the Lakers for a while, then decided to try out deeper for Kings. We found the Kings in 120-180 FOW and they came on riggers down 45 and 55, and also on a 10 color core. The DW Super Slim Glow Frog, Glow Corn, and SuperGlow Green Machine were all good. We didn't have a King bite on a Fly combo today. Once the East winds picked up it got pretty snotty and the bite shut down. We called it a day earlier than we had wanted to but we still accomplished our mission - Kings on the deck of the boat and lots of rods firing! Another week or so and it'll be on like Donkey Kong in Wilson! Since there's been an awful lot of talk about them here I should also mention that we ran our new Daiwa Saltist reels today and were universally impressed. We got to play with a few really big Lakers on our wire diver reels and what few concerns I had over the reel being too fast were quickly put to rest. The reels are just awesome. That high gear ratio is going to be the new standard in trolling reels if I had to guess. Here's a couple of pics from today:
  3. Today we fished out of Wilson and boated a nice mixed bag of Lakers, Kings, and Cohos. We started out a bit West of port in 50 FOW and boated a few nice Lakers that came on a DW SS Die Hard fished off of our riggers parked at 30 & 40 feet: After several hours of messing around in the skinny water we finally decided at about 10:30am to slide out to some deeper water and we were rewarded with several nice spring Kings. The Kings wanted our spoons run off of the riggers anywhere from 25-50' down over 80-110 FOW. The Northern King Sea Sick Waddler, DW SS Green Dolphin, and DW SS Green Goby were our best King spoons today, and we had a great King take a Green Double Crush Glow Spinny/Sigg's Rigs 42nd Pulse fly combo on a wire Deeper Diver set at 120' on a #2 setting: I wish I could tell you what our best down speed was today but we didn't have the probe up and working. Best SOG on the GPS was 2.5-2.8 for us today. We'll have our probe back in the water tomorrow. We'll be back out tomorrow and I'll do my best to get a report up before I catch an early morning flight to WI on Monday.
  4. More Laker action for us today. We got a late start and headed West towards the river at about 7am. We ran out to about 50 FOW just a tad East of 4 Mile and set up with that big SW wind at our backs. We had lots of marks on the screen in 80-90 FOW but we just couldn't get them going with any sort of consistency. In the two hours we were out there we got bit on our SS Die Hard on a rigger parked at 70' and we took a really good shot on our diver pulling a green Spinny/Sigg's Green Hypnotist fly out 90' on a #2 setting. That diver shot was a real good fish and it peeled a bunch of line off before throwing the hook. I'd bet that was our first West-end King bite! I'll be the first to admit that today was more about exploring the area than it was about actually fishing, so when the wind picked up even more we all decided that it was time to head back to the dock and get to work getting settled in. There were a couple of other boats a bit East of us in the same water depths we were in and on the way in we saw a couple more working the skinny inside water, but I have no idea how any of them did.
  5. We arrived in Wilson at dinner time and after a quick meal we headed out for a real short troll. We set up in 40 FOW and trolled straight out to 225FOW then pulled lines and headed back in. We picked up a Laker on a SS Green Goby spoon down 80' over 120FOW and that was it for any action. So we've already caught as many Lakers as we caught all of last season! We started to mark some fish 100-150' down out over 200-225FOW but it was getting dark so we decided to pull lines and come in. Inside 200FOW the screen was pretty blank. We'll be out tomorrow for a full morning West of port.
  6. Thanks guys! We hope to be running the boat West later this week and then it's game on for the Kings!
  7. We had red hot brown trout action in Fair Haven today! I fished with my buddies Gump, Eric, and Curt and we had consistent action all morning long and boated a mixed bag of browns, a coho, and a steelie. Water temps were 45-47 degrees and the fish wanted a 2.4-2.8mph troll. Goby stick baits (KA-BOOM's and a new Rapala) and this new Super Slim VQ Green Goby did most of the damage for us today: We were in 9-10 FOW all morning long and I had that spoon parked at 8' on a rigger and it took 6 or 7 fish in about two hours down time today. I was messing around with a few other patterns first thing in the morning but as soon as I put that one on it lit up. East of the chute 2-3 bluffs down was good for us, but it sounded like the guys who went further East did equally well. I didn't hear from anyone who went West out of the chute, but I assume they had as much fun as we did today. Most boats we saw today were hooked up too. The few fish that we kept all had 2-3" Gobies in their bellies, so if you come up, bring your Goby imitations with you and have at it. What a great way to start the season!
  8. We've had tremendous luck with Dave's KA-BOOM baits for browns: The Goby pattern was especially good for us last April!
  9. Wire all the way for us. Braid collect fleas pretty badly and can foul up the works fairly quickly. Wire cuts through the fleas and will allow us to get our Walker Deeper Divers down as far as 120' deep or more. We run 30# 7 strand stainless from AFW. We buy it here: http://www.atommiktrollingflies.com/lee.htm You'll never get mono that deep, plus the stretch of mono makes it pretty difficult to get the diver to release.
  10. We didn't put it on a scale for fear of the cold weather harming the fish. We snapped a couple of pics really quick and got it back into the water unharmed. We guessed it to weigh somewhere between 16-17 lbs. That was my first time float fishing for steelhead Skeiner...it won't be my last that's for sure!!
  11. Yeah, it's one of the prettiest places in the State as far as I'm concerned. And it's also one of the premier trout & salmon fishing rivers in the country. If you ever get out this way it's definitely a must-fish!
  12. Dad & I got out with Andy Bliss from Chasin' Tail Adventures on Sunday and tied into quite a few steelhead, with the highlight being this pig that I landed on a trout bead fished under a float: Here's a few other random pics from the trip: It was COLD, but we still had a great day. Andy sure knows the river and he put us on fish all day long. I'm looking forward to my next trip up there...sure is a great way to cure cabin fever!
  13. I was just on the phone with Cannon yesterday and was told that they have plenty of parts, probes, etc. available for the SNT. There is also some talk of a new unit being introduced in the future although there are no firm plans as to when.
  14. I saw this over on another forum today and wanted to get these dates out there so those of us who are interested can set aside the dates. We'll most likely fish the Wilson event, possibly even St. Catherines if time permits. 5 Scotty King of the Lake Tournaments in 2009 April 24, 25, 26 - St. Catharines, On May 8, 9, 10 - Wilson, N.Y. June 26, 27, 28 - Whitby, On August 21, 22, 23 - Oswego N.Y. September 4, 5, 6 - St. Catharines, On King of the Lake will be Crowned with total points accumulated over the 5 tournaments. Entries are $350 Main Event $100 Saturday $100 Sunday $ 50 Big fish Friday Registration will open soon.
  15. We got out at the crack of noon today and fished till 5:30pm or so. We found an awful lot of bait and some occasional hooks east of the chute in 120-140FOW. Temp was down 70' and we had bites on our 500' copper, our 65' rigger, and our 80' rigger, all flasher/fly set-ups. White/blue seemed to be the bait of choice as we got bit on both a white double crush glow Spin. Dr. and an E-chip pulling either a Sigg's Bule Dolphin or Powder Hypnotist. We also got our favorite green double crush glow Spin Dr./Sigg's Green Hypnotist to fire today. The fish seemed to want it fairly slow again today...1.8-2.0mph on our Depth Raider. All in all another fairly slow afternoon, but I suspect that the guys that were able to stay out till dark might have gotten a few more bites as we were beginning to see some more hooks around that bait as we were pulling lines. This might be the last report for the season. I'm not sure we'll get out again before we have to pull the boat, but if we do I'll post it here as always.
  16. You are absolutely right Mike! Be sure to bring your cameras with you in the woods fellas. And if you forget it, you can still take pictures that'll look great by getting some trees or grass (no cars, beer cans, etc) in the background. Let's see if we can have an entire thread this year without the usual buck in the back of the pickup truck or even worse, the buck hanging upside down in the garage pictures.
  17. After we spent nearly three hours working a real slow pick East of Fair Haven we ended up pulling lines and running even further East today and ended up having a good day in 80-110 FOW. White Spinny or E-Chips pulling Sigg's White Crinkle and Glow Ghost flies off the riggers down 65-82' took the majority of our bites today, but we also took several shots on a Green Spinny/Sigg's Green Hypnotist fly and a Chartreuse E-Chip/Sigg's Mtn. Dew fly. The fish wanted it slow today: 1.6-2.0 down speed was our best speed range. Here's a pic.
  18. First thing I do as soon as they come out of the package is switch that rear swivel to the "more action" hole. We never run them on the "less action" side.
  19. My sister and her family lives in Holland and we get out there every couple of years to visit. Next time I'm out that way I GOTTA make time to fish from there. Last year I went up to Ludington and fished with Shane from Dreamweaver and had a great time with the steelies. But I gotta make time for Holland next time. Great catch guys!
  20. On Friday we left the dock at Anchor at 5:30am and went out in front of Fair Haven to thoroughly fish that area. We had a nice fish on for a few minutes first thing on a NK Die Hard fished off of a rigger down 100' but dumped it. We had a ton of bait out in 130-150FOW but there were very few hooks around. We worked our regular waypoints for a couple more hours but didn't see much other than bait on the screen and we couldn't get anything else to go. We decided to pick up and head to our day 2 waypoints from last weekend's Oswego Pro-Am out deeper and a bit west of port. When we got there we found a few of the Pro-Am boats in the area as well as a few of the Fair Haven regulars. We got set up and found some nice hooks down 80' or so. We took a couple of nice steelies and a couple of small Kings before we decided to motor over to Sodus to get checked into our slip there for the weekend. On Saturday we knew that some of the contenders for the cup were gonna head to Oswego to fish for browns. We hadn't seen much from Fair Haven to about Port Bay on Friday, but some friends of our had done fairly well just East of Sodus so we decided to give that a shot rather than run an hour for browns. We went out to about 170 FOW and got set up out in front of Chimney bluffs. We had all kinds of bait and hooks in anywhere from 140-180 FOW but we just couldn't get them to go. After we worked that area for a close to three hours I finally decided to move a rigger up shallower than we had been fishing all morning. It wasn't up there more than 3 minutes when we took the steelhead that ended up being the biggest on the Pro side of the tournament. That fish came on a NK Glow Frog spoon and weighed 10.21 lbs. We put that rig back in the water and moved another rig up higher. The rig that we had just moved up fires and we boated a King that came in at slightly over 23lbs at the weigh-in. That fish came on a Green Double Crush Glow Spinny/Sigg's Green Hypnotist fly out 240' on a 2.5 setting. From there on out we hooked up another 7 or 8 times, all on rigs that we had moved up way out of temp anywhere from 50-80 ft. down. We lost a screamer on the wire dipsy, and broke a nice one off right at the back of the boat on our 400' copper that was pulling a Chrome Frog Spinny/ Sigg's Super Lime Glow Pulse fly. Our riggers pulling clean spoons were by far the hottest set-up of the day for us and most of the fish that we boated came off of them pulling NK Glow Frogs. We ended the day in 16th place with 5 fish in the cooler and I felt like if I had just moved one or two riggers up out of temp sooner that we could've been in a lot better position. We knew we were going back to this same spot on Sunday and we felt like we had a good shot at making some noise in the standings. On Sunday we went back to our waypoints from the day before only to find that the fish weren't there. We went into search mode and found some of them in just a bit closer but still on the same troll that we had been on the day before. As we made a turn in 125FOW our 600' copper pulling a Chrome spinny/Apple Glow Pulse fly fires and we landed our first Laker of the year. We got back on our troll and headed out to the deeper end of it and just before the rains came we landed a great King that came in at 24.91 lbs on the tournament scale after it bit our Chrome Frog Spinny/Sigg's Super Lime Glow Pulse fly that was out 225' on a 2.5. Then it rained. Hard. For quite a while. And the screen went totally blank. We stuck to our spot and as soon as the storm passed the screen lit back up again. We took shots on both our 500 and our 600' coppers but didn't land either of them. We took three small Kings on our wire divers out 180 on a .5 and 225 out on a 2.5, but lost another big boy on those settings too. With just a few minutes to go before we had to pull lines and head in our 70' rigger pulling a Die Hard fired hard and we dumped yet another big fish. :roll: We made it to the weigh-in with another 5 fish box, moved up a few spots and ended the tournament just a few points out of the money. Here's a pic of our team and our box on Day 2. Even though we didn't place, we still had a great time and taking the biggest steelie on the Pro side helped ease the pain of not making the top 10.
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