The wife is in Ireland on vacation of 2 weeks, so my daughters and I headed down to southwestern Ontario to visit my family, do some shopping and a bit of great lakes fishing for me.
Before I could go fishing a bit of shopping was in order ........ some clothes for the kids and .............. some goodies for me ....... stopping at BassPro and Gander Mountain and a few other places during our travels.....
I picked up some lures, in-line planer boards, torpedo divers, planer board rod ...... and given my call to Coast Guard earlier this summer a vhf radio and 8 foot antenna.
Not to leave my wife out of the goodies, she mentioned earlier that some music on the boat would be good, so new boat stereo!!!
My best "catch" was picking up a pair of used Scotty electric downriggers with extendable arms, dual rod holders, and swivel bases for a great price.
Now to the fish, my usual fishing partner was wprking all week so our fishing time was limited.
On Aug 11th we went out on Erie and fished from 5pm to 7pm. Conditions started good, 1 foot waves so we made out run out about 9 miles to 68 feet of water and set up. The conditions didn`t last long as the winds picked up. We pulled the gear around 7pm and headed back to port in 4 foot plus waves, with 1 six pound rainbow trout for our efforts.
On Aug 12th my dad joined my buddy and I on the boat and we fished the evening bite again, winds were a bit more co-operative that night, but not great. We were running two 10 colour lead core set ups and 2 braid dipsey setups. We ended the evening with 3 nice Erie walleye (4 pounder, 6 pounder and 8 pounder).
Saturday we launched shortly after 6am in 2-3 foot waves and made the 9 mile run to our spot from last night in 68 fow. We trolled most of the day starting with darker spoons in the overcast morning and changing as the day brightened up. We picked away at fish throughout the day, with no real colour pattern (blue n chrome, greasy chicken, mixed veggies, black n purple, ripplin redfins...) using 10 colour core, and dipseys running around 3 to 3.5 mph.
We ended up with 8 walleye, 3 rainbows, 2 silver bass and numerous sheephead. Walleye size was very good most between 4 and 7 pounds.
On Sunday, Aug 14th my dad and I drove to Toronto to fish Lake Ontario with Greig Amiel (
http://www.fishing4tails.com) we launched at 6:30am and started in shallow (160 - 170 fow) looking for big king salmon but not much action, so we decided to head deeper in search of rainbows, coho, and teenage chinooks. The morning was slow but it did pick up a bit late morning.
No real pattern, we caught fish high in the water column and deep, all 6 rods caught atleast 1 fish (2 downriggers, 2 wire dipseys, 1 leadcore, 1 leadcore torpedo diver combo). Unfortunately the few bigger fish we did find did not co-operate and we lost them.
My dad with his first rainbow of the day..
We ended up keeping a mixed bag of 9 ..... coho, atlantic?, chinooks, rainbows.
Back at home now .......... trying to finish remodelling the bathroom
and install my new goodies on the boat.
JimW