Building a Good Day on Lake Ontario, Sat. morning July 16th, 2011

Tom, whom I got to know through working at the City of Hamilton as he works in the Building Section in the Planning Department, was in conversations of fishing since we first met last fall. I like interruptions at work when it comes to fishing talk! :) Tom is an avid fisherman as well, but hadn’t been given the opportunity to try out open water trolling on the Great Lakes and asked if I can show him what it’s all about. Short answer is “Yes lets go when the fishing is good- July perhaps.”

On Saturday Morning of July 16th that day finally arrived along with Tom, Tom’s Uncle Peter (school teacher) and Peter’s son Nicklas joined us dockside in Grimsby at 6:00 am for a trip across a flat Lake Ontario and a golden Eastern horizon as the sun made it’s way up.

We motored out to 120 FOW and set up heading North towards deeper water. It wasn’t long when the first rigger rod started pumping and Nicklas was motivated to bring the first fish in the boat. A small Rainbow trout, but it broke the ice.

Then consistently throughout the day all the rods were producing fish and the fish count grew to over 25 fish by the end of the trip. We worked waters around 160- 220 FOW and concentrated baits in the top 35 feet where some schools of prey fish (bait) and plenty of fish were showing up on the SONAR. Notable fish for the day were Rainbows up to 11 lbs.

From Photo_Gallery4

From Photo_Gallery4

All three experienced a decent sized king (Chinook ) salmon from between 15- 18 lbs.

From Photo_Gallery4

From Photo_Gallery4

From Photo_Gallery4

And a few small ones went home with them for the BBQ that evening.

Tom, Peter and Nicklas were good on the rods and ready to do battle with high jumping rainbows and drag burning kings. A great trip with the bunch and look forward to our August trip for Walleye on Lake Erie.

Shane Thombs
FINtastic Sportfishing
www.fintasticsportfishing.com