I love introducing people to salmon fishing. It’s easy, its laid back and loads of fun. When I had the opportunity to take my younger cousin out for the day, I knew it would be a blast. He’s not an avid angler by any means; however, he’s good company and I just wanted to show him what Lake Ontario had to offer. Many people have no clue what opportunities exist in body of water, including my cousin, but that was about to change.
We launched out of Port Credit Marina at 5:30 am and had lines down at 5:45 am. I didn’t want to run a Chinook program only as I was hoping simply to get him into a few different kinds of fish so I dropped two spin doctors and fly’s and the riggers held the spoons. Well as soon as I drop the starboard dipsy, it lights up with a solid mature. Unfortunately, we drop it after 20 seconds but the look on his face was priceless. Set out lines back out and we trolled between 60-100 feet for the most part of the morning picking up the odd mature Chinook Salmon and Rainbow Trout. Here are a couple shots from the early
morning.
Of course I let him reel in every fish, dropping a few more than usual but it’s part of the learning curve.
As fishing in tight started to slow, I didn’t want him to be discouraged so I pulled lines and headed for deeper waters. Immediately when we arrive to 320 fow, he notices the different colour water, which I thought was a pretty astute observation by a first time given we were in the blue zone and the difference in clarity was not that significant from in shore. We again set up our lines and unfortunately I didn’t notice that my downrigger ball had become unclipped from the snap……bye bye $40 ball. What a kick in the nuts and I knew the riggers would be the hot set up out there. We now only had 2 dipsy’s and 1 rigger working.
Trolling around from 320-340 and back to 310 we had nothing to show for our hour of trolling in the blue zone. I looked over and said “we might as well troll in and hopefully pick up a few fish”. Well, we picked up a few fish alright. Rods were firing all over the place and my cousin was in heaven. He had a blast and so did I. We had about 15 hook ups in about 2.5-3 hours which kept things really exciting. We didn’t land everything but by the end of it all, he was fighting fish like a pro. Here is one of the immature Chinook we tangled with out there.
During today’s outing we were able to connect with what I thought at first was a decent size Chinook but it ended up being the biggest Rainbow I’ve caught out on the lake. I pegged it between 17-18lbs based on length and girth. What a beautiful specimen!
That spoon hanging out of its mouth did most of the damage out there along with my lemon lime pro king. It was a Warrior Spoon Orange and Silver with Orange dots. We couldn’t keep that spoon down for more than 20 minutes without getting rocked.
At the end of the day, we boated a ton of fish but most important, I got my cousin into some good fish and he has already sent me a text message asking for more punishment. Can’t wait to get back out there with him!
Gear review: A few key products that helped put us on fish were the following:
Walker Dipsy Divers – these planning devices are top notch. They were key in getting our offering down and away from the boat. Our dipsy divers were set on a 3 setting on each side set up with flasher fly combo’s as well as spoons.
Warrior Spoons – This spoon was basically the “provider” today (take a look at the picture above Silver and Orange with Orange dots). It hooked the most fish and I landed the biggest rainbow I’ve ever hooked out in the lake. Unfortunately, we lost that lure on another fish but for sure I’ll be picking up a whole bunch of those spoons.
Fishing Report Most fish were caught between 250-300 fow directly south of Port Credit, down 20-40 feet. Orange and Green spoons did most of the damage. Trolling between 2.8 and 3.2 surface speed was the ticket. Dipsy’s back 60-100 feet on 3 settings also took a good number of shots as well.
