The day was picture perfect with sunshine and little wind. The spring, thus far, has been cold and rainy and even though we were at the end of April, the fish were still in a typical early April patterning of shallow and only feeding in short time windows and when the opportunity presents itself.
A 6:30 am blast-off had us guessing where to start. The King of the Lake (KOTL) tournament out of Port Dalhousie had their blast-off at 6:00 am and had already reached their fishing locations before we started. We noticed that a number of the KOTL tournament boats were fishing west of Jordon out to as far as Grimsby . Waters in front of Beamsville were the most plentiful with a cluster of boats, and we decided to run out in that direction and scan with the sonar for clues to tell us when to pull off the throttle and start our morning troll.
The SONAR didn’t reveal anything that would tell us to stop, so John said- lets set up on our old early April 2009 waypoint straight out from Vinland in 50 FOW. Our surface temperature was 42’F. We watched as the boats continued to troll west in front of us and moved shallower over the course of the next hour, but not nets were pulled. We followed suit and turned in around the location of the end of Tufford Rd between Vineland and Beamsville. On our turn in and deciding to turn back east along what we finally come across was some green water in 30 FOW, we hit a coho on a three colour and NK28 mirror spoon with Mnt Dew Tape on the face of the spoon.
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The decision was made to pull lines and run back to in front of Jordon. We set-up in 40 FOW and continued to troll in shallower and into coloured water from the plume coming out of Jordon Harbour . The water inside of 30FOW was chocolate brown. Many boats were fishing in the muddy water, but we decided to work the water outside of 30FOW
We marked some fish close to bottom in 40 FOW and worked one small area over and over.
A Bomber Long A with a yellow back and white belly was set 50 ft behind the ball and down 28 ft.
After a short time the rod takes a light strike and John takes the rod and pulls the line out of the release with a quick jerk of the rod and then quickly gathers the slack line only to set up on a heavier fish. It wasn’t long and the drag started to pull off the reel. Not a long run, but it was clear it was a king. A short fight and the king came to the net. Then the other rigger using a Black and Purple customized with metallic metal flake on the side also set 50 feet back and down 22 feet.
I grabbed the rod and quickly brought in another small coho.
We work the area, but nothing seems to move so we angle outward and a short time later hit one last fish. Another coho on the three colour leadcore pulling a Orange Crush NK 28.
Time was running out and weighin at 2:30, we decided to call it a day at 2:00 and go it to get prepared for the weighin and BBQ. Everyone managed to catch fish and it was easy to see that it was anyones game to catch the largest fish- salmon or otherwise.
We managed to weigh the largest with our king coming in at 15.96 lbs about 3 pounds over second place.Great day to be on the water, and a great event for the fellow Strait Line Anglers.
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Shane Thombs
www.fintasticsportfishing.com
