The King Of The Lake Tournament was also to blast off at the same time so the tournament organizers suggested we wait until 5 minutes for them to blast off. We sat on the west side of the pier head and watched 30 or so KOTL tournament boats hightail it for there fishing spots. Only about 7 boats went west and the rest went East. When we blasted off we had a 3 ft chop from the Northwest as well as the wakes from all the KOTL tournament boats. It was a brutal ride all th e way to Port Weller. We sat down in front of Port Weller. I had a look with the SONAR as we continued at about 10 MPH. Scanning for any signs of bait or fish. The KOTL boats didn’t stop at Weller and instead motored further East with a giant pack working the ledge of the Niagara Bar.
After scanning for a few minutes I wasn’t happy with what I seen on the graph and said, lets go to the old Riffle Range area and see if there is anything to be seen. Fishing the ledge is not my favourite when there are so many boats in combat to run the drop-off. We ran to 55 FOW west of Four mile point and immediately started marking bait up high and a few hooks at mid depth. Ran two riggers and started letting out the 3 colour put on an inline board and stared setting it out when the board started pulling back. Fish on, its was a small coho and we put it in the box to find the BBQ later. That was on the new goby coloured MC Rocket with orange dots ran naked without a flasher in front. I set it out again and had the rest of th e spread put out and it went off again with a coho. In the mean time the Lymans on a five colour leadcore yanks the board back and the drag begins to sing, but a short time later the hooks pull out and I said lets get the big board out and do it clean.
Once the big boards were out we had two five colours on the port side board and the three colour on the starboard side. For the next few hours we struggled to match the consistency of the two five colour leadcores using the downriggers. Changes in spoons and cutbait and MC Rocket off the riggers were not getting it done. Shorten the leads up from 150 ft to 100, then 50 and then 40 ft. Still nothing. The Slide Diver out 50 ft and then 90 feet to the diver on a 5 setting took a massive blow and the fish was an obvious quality king, but the change over from my hands to Kenny seen the fish pull off and it marked 3 in a row that were sizable kings that we had lost. We still only had two cohos in the box in a horrible success rate in getting the fish to the boat.
We worked the same area as the picture told us not to move. We marked most of the fish 30 ft down and they were curious coming right into the riggers. I changed the 3 colour for a 7 colour and it wasn’t long when it takes a rip off the planerboard. First king comes to the boat around 8 lbs. Then the 5 colour leadcore goes again and it’s a doubleheader. We boat that fish that is almost the same size king at around 9 lbs. That same five colour with Michael Ja ckson Bomber Long A starts getting hot but we drop another fish and then finally hook-up on another good one. We get that one in and it’s the biggest of the day for us but only 12 lbs.
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| From Photo_Gallery7 |
We finished the day with a bad rate of landing our fish, but still brought in our three salmon to the scales and found us sitting about middle of the standings between 21 boats. I don’t know our official standing as I turned back out for an afternoon/evening charter. Read the next blog; “Ramage Does Damage, April 28, 2012” for more on it.
Shane Thombs
www.fintasticsportfishing.com
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