Billy V

Today Andy Bliss from Cold Steel joined my Dad and I and our friends Rick and Linc for a trip out of Fair Haven. Nothing fast and furious, but we did boat a nice mixed bag of Coho, Brown, Rainbow, and even an Atlantic. I walked off and left my camera in the truck, so all I have is the pic I took of Rick's nice colored-up brown to show you. All the rest of the fish were cookie-cutter sized 2-3lb'ers. Andy snapped a few pics with his camera, so maybe he'll share them with us later. Water temps were 44-48 degrees and there was a pretty homogenized color to the lake. No real hot-spots to speak of, even off of creek mouths, etc. Black/Silver and that #47 Metallic Orange Specs KA-BOOM did most of the damage, and I think we got one fish on an NK28 SuperGlow Mulatto. Bright sun and calm seas were what today was all about...not exactly the best conditions for brown/coho fishing, but we still had a great time. We'll be back out after 'em on the weekend.

Wow, you got your card fast Dick! It's been 6 weeks since I applied and I still haven't heard a thing!

Once you guys get through the application process you can check the status of it here" http://twicinformation.tsa.dhs.gov/twicinfo/ And I for one won't be wearing my TWIC card. They can stuff that reg. right up their arse!

Thanks guys. The lake was pretty riled up from the huge thunderstorms that rolled through over night, but by the time we found the fish and started getting into them it had layed down pretty nicely!

Mark and his son Alex are Henderson Harbor regulars who decided to give the brown trout in Fair Haven a try today. We had some really nasty thunderstorms roll through on Friday night and when we got out to the lake at first light the lake was pretty riled up and snotty. We didn't find the temps we had hoped for right away and the fishing was tough while we were in search mode. But once we found the warmer water and some nice marks we began to pick away at them fairly well. We found our best water way West of Fair Haven, almost to Port Bay! We took fish on #47 Metallic Orange Specs KA-BOOM Shiners, Black/Silver Rapala's, Black/Gold Rapala's, and the Northern King Mulatto. Best depths were 12-15 FOW, and 2.2-2.4 mph was our best speed. While it wasn't as fast and furious as we would have liked, we worked hard and ended up the day with a nice catch and the lake laid down pretty nicely by late morning so we had a comfortable ride for most of the day. The cold front that blew through on Friday night didn't help matters much, and I suspect that the fishing will only get better from here on out. Today's fish were all smaller than we got into last weekend but they still made us smile. After a rough start it ended up being a great day to be out on the water and we made a couple of new friends to boot. What more can you ask for? Man, I love this!! Here are a couple of shots from today:

We're still using the Plano boxes and putting a couple of flys in each compartment. We wrap up the leaders as follows: I wish there was a better way to store them. I've tried the tubes and didn't like them, used foam to wrap them around and didn't like that either. So we're still using the Plano boxes and we have about a dozen of them laying around.

Yeah, we decided to pass on the poli glow this year. Just a day of buffing and waxing and she came right back and looks fantastic!

I figured you were kidding and my response was written that way too! Wow, 15 miles each way each day...YIKES!!! That hurts my wallet to just think about it!!

I just got the boat back from having some cosmetic work done on the gelcoat. I think she looks fantastic now that the topsides match the rest of the hull:

PENN YAN boats: Big? Oh Yeah! The bigger the better! Ugly? Not to me. Penn Yan's are one of the two or three best looking Great Lakes boats in my eye! Tiara and Rampage are the other hotties that make me drool. Heavy? Heck yeah! Got 5-7 footers? NO BIG DEAL...Let's go fish! Aluminum is for beer cans. Thirsty? Nah. We average about 10 gals/day for an off-shore salmon trip and about 2/3 that for on-shore browns. Not too bad for a boat with an 11' beam with twin 350's that can push it to over 40mph. Oh, and I'm a hard-top guy too! :grin:

Gottum....welcome! How are those Scotty's treating you??

Welcome George! You won't find a nicer group of fishermen than you will here!

Welcome to Captainhood! And post pics of that new Penny when u take delivery!!

We never landed a really big King last year. 27 lbs or so was about it for our biggest. But we did have a ton of days where we did really well on Kings in the high-teens to low 20# range:

I wrap a piece of electrical tape around the spool on the reel so that the wire has something to bite into. I tie a simple clinch knot and start spooling.

http://www.lotsa.org/Wire%20Line%20Knot.htm Check that link. That's the knot we tie and have never had it fail. No crimps needed!

Thanks guys. Nope, no hitchhiker on that brown. We noticed that the fish we took yesterday were definitely larger than the fish we took at this time last year...hopefully that's true for all of the browns to come. We've all been working hard to get guys to put the little browns back the past few years and hopefully the fish will be larger this year as a result. Needless to say whackin' an 8lb. brown as the first fish of the year sure felt good!

Today Yankee Troller, Jay and I spent the morning prepping the boat for the season...electronics installed, downriggers mounted, probes repaired, rods, reels and tackle put on the boat, etc. We finally got things ready to go shortly before noon and by 12:30 we had fish slime on the floor for the first time of the year. Jay boated a nice fat brown that came on a firetiger KA-BOOM shiner fished off of a planer board. We found that once the wind began to die down that the color went out of the water and the fishing slowed considerably. We spent a couple of hours running the boat thru her paces and for the most part we're ready to go. Be careful if you're heading out of Fair Haven as there's a log buried on the west side of the channel just before you get the the chute that you definitely don't want to hit in the dark on your way out. It's sticking up about 6" out of the water. A couple of pics from today: I'm SO glad that the season is finally here!

Straight off the back of the boat for us:

We've had tremendous luck with Dave's KA-BOOM Shiners for browns: You can find all of their colors here: www.xtackle.com

Yes, the fish on Lake Ontario are as big as you've heard! And my name is Bill.

Unquestionably the Siggs Rigs Blue Dolphin (aka HAMMER). No other fly even comes close.

Day before Halloween I shot a nice 8 with my bow.

Ithaca, NY. 1 hour to Lake Ontario, 5 minutes to Cayuga Lake.

Unit is SOLD.