Guided Kevin and Drew for a full-day trip starting just after 6:40 am out of Fairhaven, targeting Chinook (aka King) Salmon. It's no secret that this season, with its crazy weather has been spotty for salmon fishing in the big lake - and that's for trollers. For jiggers, that makes it even tougher. And it's no big secret that the King fishing was spectacular on Lake Ontario during the past two years, but were those two years an anomaly, or is this a new era for salmon fishing the big lake? I'd say it was an anomaly with the milder winters and steady warming that the past couple of springs featured, but who knows?
Either way, after last year's great reports, Kevin and Drew wanted to give the jigging a shot. I called them yesterday after hearing some tougher reports and they were still up for it. I brought along some drop-shot and tube jig set-ups for smallmouth fishing incase the salmon action was slow and the guys wanted a break.
Our early AM depthfinder screens were very encouraging! We had a lot of bait and fish swarming around it. I always use my temp probe and see what the temp profile is - I don't blindly run out and look for other boats or follow old reports. I want to know what's happening NOW! We had salmon and trout friendly temperatures from in around 70' out to the deeps (these fish can and often do suspend over deep cold water when the thermocline is set-up.) We had a few decent chases but no hits, despite fishing hard and trying a variety of colors on the jigs.
We tried various depths and eventually set up for bass after maybe 3 hours without much to show. On tubes, Drew caught a young, but still nice smallmouth which was a good sign. It had a fish following it. Kevin nabbed a 15"er and then we tried deeper with the drop-shots. The guys got machine-gunned pretty hard from gobies, but both Drew and Kevin came away from the experience wanting to do more drop-shotting, so that was great. Skaneateles, here we come!
Our fishfinder screens got progressively more discouraging as the afternoon went on and it wasn't for a lack of trying - we worked out to 200' of water. It didn't appear to be a great fishing day or should I say "catching day" on the big lake. We had a half-dozen charters at times working within sight of us and we didn't hear much whooping and hollering. We saw two fish netted by different boats that were both small - either immature kings, cohos or steelhead. The weather was perfect and the guys were impressed (as I always am) with the beauty of Fairhaven Park and the bluffs overlooking the lake. Great day to be out, but strike one on the jigging Kings for this season. In hindsight, we probably should have targeted browns out of Oswego. Maybe next time!
