Reports

Where the heck do I start today?  I guided longtime client Scott for a full-day on Lake Ontario out of Fairhaven State Park getting underway just before 7 am.  Scott is a passionate angler and lives in Norfolk Virginia.  His dad owns a place on Skaneateles Lake and over the past 12 years or so (maybe more) we’ve usually done two or three full-day trips a year, generally in mid-July.  We’ve had some terrific days along with a couple of clunkers over the years.  Mostly good ones though!   Over the past year or two, Scott’s had a lot going on and has booked one trip.  We’ve done Cayuga, Seneca, Owasco, Keuka, Skaneateles and even Onondaga Lake in the past.  Over the past couple years, he’s wanted to fish Oneida Lake primarily for walleyes.  I’m not a walleye guide, nor am I an Oneida Lake guide, but understandably, good clients get familiar with a guide and know that they can deliver on other water bodies – at least they hope we can.  We have plenty of Oneida and some Lake Ontario guides jigging lake trout here in the spring and they do just fine with it.

I was on Oneida Lake around two weeks ago with my buddy Todd and we had a decent day despite next to non-existent winds for much of it.  I’ve been looking forward to getting back out here and testing a few ideas.  Unfortunately for Scott, the forecast looked like sunny and calm for today.  We originally had a possible date or two open for last week, but my truck issue forced me to change the trip dates.

Lake Ontario has been “on fire” for chinook salmon this year by nearly all accounts.  I usually try to get up there once or twice a year to try jigging kings or other salmonids (or do other fishing) but I put it on the back burner due to my busy July schedule.   I had a call from fellow Finger Lakes (and other locations) guide Kurt Hoefig and he filled me in on how great the King fishing (jigging) was for him around a week to ten days ago.  He nabbed his first one on the jig last year and then hammered them this year on his first try!  Can’t beat that!  We’ve been sharing a lot of information recently and it’s making us both better anglers and will ultimately help both of our clients out a lot.

Once I saw that Monday didn’t look great for Oneida, but potentially great (or at least decent) for a shot at a King, I asked Scott if he was up for it.  He said “Yes” without hesitation!   However he did want a back-up plan in case the King fishing was bad.  I said that we could do some smallmouth fishing around the shoals at Oswego.  (I am kind of tired of launching at Oswego during the summer.  It’s busier with tourists.  Harborfest either just happened or is around the corner and it’s a longer drive for me, plus I have to pay to launch there.  Fairhaven is the opposite – my Empire Pass works there just fine!  It’s also around an 80 to 90 minute drive for me.)

We got out onto the lake and there was a one to maybe 2′ chop out where we were fishing.  I took a temperature and stayed inside a ways from all the charters, who were mostly working west of the park.  We had great screens on the fish-finder and Scott had 3 or 4 good bumps.  He had one momentary hookup that did not stay on.  We moved out deeper and to the west then east without much happening.  The lake gradually flattened out a bit and nearly all the trollers moved both out and primarily to the west.

By the time 10 or 11 o:clock rolled around, Scott asked about bass fishing.  I figured it’d be the call to make.  Our screens weren’t looking good and the fish didn’t seem to want our jigs and other offerings.  I made a fairly long run to Oswego and we set up around Ford Shoals.  I wish I had something good to say about the Lake Ontario south shore smallmouth fishing but I don’t.  It has only gotten worse as far as I can tell.  We were on some terrific shoals – areas that used to easily yield 40 to 50 fish days for just about anybody with a tube jig remotely on the shoals.  I had Scott try some dropshotting with nothing but gobies to show for his efforts.  I had a waypoint from October of 2021 on my Lowrance and I set him up around there with a tube jig.  He nabbed a chunky 14″ bass and we saw another one or two swimming around.  He later nailed a bigger one around 15″+.  Tremendous shoal and you basically need to put your jig in an area that’s maybe 50 yards by 50 yards to get bit.  At least the bass were younger fish, so there’s some successful spawning going on in face of the millions, if not billions of round gobies.  It would have been nice to bass fish more areas but our conditions had changed with the wind coming up from the north.  We both felt it was cool to get a couple of bass, but now was “Go time!”

We figured it was time to try for a King.  We had nothing to lose.  Scott’s family’s cottage is on one of the best smallmouth bass lakes in the state, so he certainly didn’t need to catch more bass – he can do that tonight right from his kayak if he wants!

I would love to say that we had $20, 000 worth of sonar on our boat and an assortment of jigging lures from British Columbia and Alaska as well as some saltwater high-end rods and reels from Japan and scientifically figured out the Lake Ontario Kings.

My sonar unit is a Lowrance Elite-10 I think.  I had Scott using my lake trout set-ups with the usual 12lb test Seaguar Invis-X leader, Medium rods and 14lb braid.  I did bring a couple of Butterfly jigs and heavier casting outfits with Revo-Winches on them and Shimano special leaders, but we never caught fish on them.  Scott does a lot of fishing for big bull redfish and brought some tackle for that along – some big spoons and jigs.

I’d love to say that I stared at the screen like a hawk and told Scott just what to do.  I did try that, but it didn’t help us much.  Nope, Scott just dropped his jig down to the bottom and tried different things.  We were telling some horror stories we’d heard from other guides and Scott hooked up!!!  After an awesome fight, I netted a King just under 18lbs and over 36″!  Mission accomplished!  I sent the photos and was on the phone with Bill Hilts Jr, who does a lot of Lake Ontario promotional work and does the Buffalo News fishing line, of which I contribute a weekly report, when Scott hooked up again!!!   King number 2 in the boat!  I think it was around 29″.  Good fight, but not like the big gal!  Fat gals do rock when we’re talking Kings!!!  Scott then lost a solid after a minute or so, then he nailed another!  This one got wrapped in the line and really messed up his gill-plates.  No need to worry, all will be heading to the grill or smoker!

I have been very skeptical in the past when I hear about charter captains talking about how much bait they see in Lake Ontario.  Maybe on the west end, but for a good decade or so,  I would hear or read these opinions and completely disagree.  On the east end, I wasn’t seeing much bait at all.  Baitfish clearly love the nutrient-rich water of the Niagara River, Oak, Genny, Pond/Bays in Greece and so on.  The east end is often sterile.  But today was a different story and I’m sure it’s been like this all summer long.  We marked endless bait!  I mean ridiculous amounts – all up in the thermocline and above.  I filleted three Kings and they had an assortment of alewives in them from 3″ up to 6.5″  The bigger ones were bigger than we typically see in the Finger Lake.

I hope to get back out here and catch a few myself!   In one day, Scott caught as many Kings in Lake Ontario as I had EVER jigged up!  And I’ve been trying to jig them since probably 2005!  A lot has changed since then.  Trolling motors and electronics (along with temperature gauges) are infinitely better!  I used to have to keep a foot on the foot pedal of my Motorguide, which would completely wash out the screen of my depthfinder.  It was insane, but at least I tried.  I had my luck in May, thinking that the lack of a thermocline would make Kings more likely to chase a jig up.  I was correct on my theory;  only problem was that most Kings in May are on the west end of the lake!   Stay tuned!  This should get interesting!

Scott has fought a lot of big fish in the ocean!   Lots!   This is not something for novices!  Tackle must be in tip-top shape.  A large landing net (preferably with an extending handle) is a must.  Do everything right and you’ll want a large cooler with you too!

Lastly, some readers (or maybe most or all) may have noticed the green “tags” on the bottom of nearly all my posts.  I went back 20 years and tagged all my posts with anything I might have found useful or interesting.  So under this post, you’ll see a tag for “Fairhaven State Park” – click on it, and you’ll see every post that I tagged with it – basically you’ll have all of my Fairhaven Reports.  Click on “Jigging Kings” and you can go back and see how much time I wasted,  I mean spent, mostly fruitlessly, trying to jig up Kings on Lake Ontario in the past.  I also have a tag “Lake Ontario Jigging” – those would also direct you to posts on jigging browns and rainbows out there (in addition to the King Jigging.) I do not have any “Lake Trout” tags, since I do so much of that, it’d be silly, but there are tags for “bowfin” and other interesting fish as well as techniques like “fly-fishing.”   I will do a post eventually with all of the tags, so anyone can click what they want to go into the archives.  I did not edit any of the archives, except for grammatical errors.  In the old days I may have thought pike were heavier than what they were and so on.  All my errors along those lines are still intact.