tbromund

Well, the Thompson bought the farm a couple years ago and I've spent the last two seasons out of the water, picked up a 1989 22' Starcraft Islander Hardtop last year and took my time putting it together.  Looking forward to splashing her this year and finding out how she fishes. 

We'll see if it is a long term or short term solution for me before I go through the re-naming ceremony.

I'm back in the game biotches

Tim

Regular ole American Nasty ole good for fertilizing gardens CArp.....hahahahah

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

Hey Pete, good to see ya over here on GLF

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.

Is this what you mean?

Scotty 1173 Powergrip Plus Line Release w/ 48" Leader & Cable Snap

Do they seem to work better than the Cannon offshore ones?

I had the feeling there was no simple answer for this, appears I might have to pick up one each of the Chamberlains, Blacks and Scotty's and make a fishing trip out of it.

Al

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.

I was at the Platte hatchery last fall and they were only taking the mature coho. The two year old jacks (one summer in the lake, coho get planted at eighteen months) were dispatched and tossed in a bin. Not sure they follow the same policy with kings.

I think we're missing out as in the fish that make it to the weirs are the ones that did not hit lures. Are they making salmon less likely to bite by breeding these fish?

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