tbromund

No such animal. Carp are not native to the continent, the common carp were just imported a long time ago, from Europe, where they were originally imported from Asia. Tim

you have a PM Tim

Yup, they were fishing in a salmon only tournament.

I fish Lake O out of Olcott all season and my first rod in the water in the morning is always a wire diver, just slowly creeping out against the drag fishing it's way out to it's intended destination as I get the probe rigger deployed. Many times, that diver gets smoked before I can even get the cannonball and probe hooked to the rigger, can't have more than 60-70 feet of wire out when they hit it. It is almost always a big mature king. They are definitely up high and feeding in the morning, regardless of water temps. Tim

There are quite a few sturgeon in the Buffalo Harbor area and the Upper (and Lower) Niagara Rivers. Their populations have really rebounded in the past decade or two. Tim

I've been using 30 lb 7 strand Malin bright wire for many years, never had an issue.

Hate to disagree, but I hate blacks releases and all of the variants like them. I've used them on other guys boats and just find them to be a royal PIA to set. I use Scotty Powergrips and love them. Easy to set, you can load the crap out of the rod and never get a false release, yet shakers are easily telegraphed to the rod tip from the long tether you can get on them. Tim

what climate warming?? It's amazing to what lengths some groups will go to perpetuate that myth.

Yes that's it, though you don't really need to go to the 48" leader, the 30" is more than enough. They work much better than the other ones, if you bury your line in the back of those it'll never release without a fish biting and if you're fishing deep, it takes some effort to pop them from the boat. Most of the guys I know, (including myself) use the large scotty planer releases, which is the same clip on a shower curtain ring for running long coppers off of big boards, they'll pull a 500'+ copper all day in heavy seas and not pop the release unless a fish hits. Tim

I know a lot of people love the Blacks releases, but I've always preferred the pinch pad type myself. I use the large Scotty releases with the long tether. you can absolutely load the crap out of those releases without getting false releases and with the long tether, shakers are clearly telegraphed to the rod tip, even with a fully loaded rod, so you're not dragging them around. Tim

I think I may have seen them somewhere before

Ahhhhh, now it makes sense Hi Chad, I might have known Tim

You want it as high as possible. I have the Cisco Electric Planer Reels on my boat. I have the reels mounted on the rocket launcher and the pulleys up near the front of the grab rails on top of the hardtop. Makes for a nice setup and with as hard as the Amish Outfitters Redwood Boards I run pull, it's really the only way to go as it's almost impossible to reel those in with manual reels. Without the hardtop I would have a mast at least 6' high mounted near the bow. Reels mounted on the Launcher Pulley on the grab rail Tim

I used to have 4 on the boat, but with all the other delivery options available today, the out downs never got used and really were just in the way, so I took them off and added more rod holders on the gunwales. Can't honestly say I've ever missed the two I took off. Tim

Yes Lake Ontario was the same, fewer but bigger fish when we could get out. It was windy constantly and seemed to come out of a different direction every other day, The lake was tore up all summer and never really stabilized and set up properly inside all year. The only stable water and fishing was offshore 6-10 miles. Tim

We're down to 2 riggers on my 24' and quite honestly, still catch a lot of our bigger kings on them. Tim

I trailered for years, now keep it in a slip and wouldn't have it any other way, especially since I no longer own a tow vehicle

You also have to consider the genetics of the strain you are selecting. The Tule strain was specifically selected because it is a river mouth/short river running strain, which stays out in the ocean/lake feeding as long as possible, when they run, they are almost ready to spawn, which is why they get stale so quickly once they enter the creeks. This made them an ideal selection for the great lakes where, with a few exceptions, 30 miles is a long tributary and they wanted a strain that would stay out there eating alewives as long as possible. Every so often you'll hear someone wish they'd get some Kenai River king eggs for the Great Lakes so we could see those 6-7 year fish that get to 60-70+ lbs. The problem there is that those fish are genetically wired to run the river starting late May and June, because they have almost 1,000 miles of river to run to reach the spawning gravel. That won't work in the great lakes and we'd never have a summer fishery for the big matures as they'd all be dead, stinking up the warm, short rivers we have because their biology told them to run in the spring.

These fish don't grow from 3" to 20+ lbs in 3 years by being selective/picky eaters. The reason they strike any lure is because it kinda looks like food to their pea sized brain.

All the great lakes have the same strain of Chinook Salmon, the Tule Strain from the Columbia River basin, so this data should be relevant even though I fish Lake Ontario instead of Michigan. Every year our DEC Fisheries Bureau publishes a Lake Ontario Annual Report detailing all of the fisheries data they collected the previous year, both in the open water creel census and from the returns to the Salmon River Hatchery. Every year it is the same, the bulk of the run is 3 year olds, with a decent percentage of mature 2 year olds, and a small percentage of jacks (mature 1 YO males). They have traditionally use the number/percentage of jacks returning as a basis for determining the strength of a particular year class. For as long as I can remember, 4 years olds make up a fairly insignificant percentage of the population, from as high as 9 or 10% of the run on the high end in the early 90's to numbers too small to be statistically significant. It is interesting that in 2011 and 2012, for some reason the bulk of the returns have been 2 year old fish instead of the normal 3 year olds making the bulk of the run. Here is the relevant page from the 2012 Annual Report showing the age structure data from 1989 through 2012: Tim

Been fishing cut bait since the mid 90s, these days I've abandoned herring for the MC Rocket fake bait and catch just as many on that as I did when you could get the good Rhys Davis pacific herring strips back in the day. Killer rig for big staging mature kings Olcott, NY - Lake Ontario Tim

didn't they get the memo that there isn't any warming, it is all a farce?

Nope, not an algae bloom http://blogs.democratandchronicle.com/520/?p=3416

Saturday August 10: I joined a friend aboard his boat for an afternoon trip out of Olcott. We got in the water around noon and fished till 4:30-5:00 after letting the lake lie down a bit. We ran out NW to 270 fow or so and trolled back with the NW seas. Almost entirely a diver bite with a steady pick of small kings on the high divers back 225 with nuclear green SD and hammer fly until we got into 180 fow near the power plant. Nice green water in that area so we shifted to a due E troll, then the low diver (mag diver back 350) fired with a big mature. Chad's friend Dave handed the rod off to me and it proceeded to go on a screaming run. 20+ minutes later it was right in back of the boat, but staying down. When it finally surfaced, we saw how big it was as it proceeded to wrap us up in both the starboard diver and rigger lines. We will managed to get it into the net and realize that it is over 30. Scale was bouncing between 31 and 32, closer to 32. then the fish proceeded to bleed all over the boat to the point that the deck ended up looking like a crime scene finished off with another mature king in the high teens(probably a mature 2 year old) and a couple more dinks to finish the day. Sunday August 11 Finally back out in my boat for the first time since the club tournament. We ran out to the 25 line after seeing reports from that area, saw the occasional mark down 100 so we trolled as far as the 27 line without seeing much picture and only catching a small king and small steelhead, so we turned around and headed back south. Once we got bask around the 25.5 line we started seeing some marks again and picked up a couple more small kings and steelies, but nothing to keep us in the area, so we continued trolling SE back towards where we were fishing on Saturday. The nice green water was still there and we started picking up fish again. Another mainly diver bite with the starboard diver at 300, again with the Nuc Green SD/Hammer fly taking fish, including a nice low 20's king and several 7-8 lb steelhead. Capt Valium SD with green/glow fly on the 85 rigger took a couple shots both nice steelhead. After a while. we were east of the plant, so we decided to move way inside and make a long west troll back to port and try and pick up some browns. Fished 30-45 fow and marked a ton of bait and hooks but couldn't get anything to go. Plenty of action, but other than the one mature, size could have been better. Felt good to be back out with the weather cooperating on the weekend for a change. Tim