Well, Saturday July 13 2019 got off to a rocky start. Although the lake was flat in the early morning, we encountered some minor battery issues which cost us a few hours of fishing. This wasn't a big deal and is part of the new boat owner experience, but by the time we had addressed the issue the lake had become too rough for us to fish. So back to the drawing board we went. While waiting for the battery to charge we ran some errands, one of which had us visiting Pulaski, NY to purchase some Soco Prime Cuts baits. If you haven't heard of Soco Prime Cuts baits, or haven't had the chance to use them, I would highly recommend you spend a few minutes researching them. Part of the modern salmon fishing model on Lake Ontario is the use of cut bait behind a flasher. While cut bait is effective, for the weekend warrior like myself it can be a bit of a hassle. Enter Soco Prime Cuts bait! The Prime Cut is an imitation cut bait that can be rigged behind magnum or strip sized cut bait heads and is available in a variety of colors to attract salmon. They are also very durable, and will enable fishermen to catch multiple fish before the bait becomes unusable. I can't recommend Soco Prime Cuts enough, to learn more visit www.socobaits.com. Let them know the Dirty Oar crew sent you!
Ok, enough marketing! (Although my recommendation couldn't be more sincere.). To say 2019 has been a difficult fishing year on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, in my opinion, would be an understatement. That said, we have had success taking Kings, Browns and Steelhead pretty regularly, but not in any significant numbers. I realize everybody has differing results, but we've fished hard and had limited success until yesterday afternoon. Once we had addressed our mechanical issue with the boat and the lake became more fishable we were able to get into some Kings an Steelhead in the 3 hour left before sundown. While the lake has not set up into what I would call a typical July fishing pattern, there is the ability to find the correct temperature (42-48 degrees Fahrenheit) water for Kings, and its much closer to the shoreline than one would typically expect. We were able to identify good fishing water in the 100-120 foot depth range about 5 miles east of the Nine Mile nuclear plant, and once we built our pattern of spoons, flashers and Soco Prime Cuts baits we were into fish. We landed 3 fish, 2 of which were King salmon (the larger of which is pictured below!) and lost 3 other fish. We were successful with spoons (Stinger Dirty Broomstick, Stinger UV Purple Clown, Glow Green Evil Eye) and a UV Blue Jeans Spin Doctor Flasher trailed by a custom DOA Blue Betty Teaser Rig tipped with a Soco Prime Cuts Lights Out cut bait imitation. All of our salmon came with the baits being presented in the 80-90 foot depth range, with 4 hitting our downriggers and 1 coming on the 400' copper line. We had a great day in a very short period of time!
What made the day remarkable, aside from landing one very large King, was the mixture of methods we used to catch the fish. On the modern side, we used newer spoons and the copper line to significant success. On the old school side, once the light conditions grew somewhat darker I pulled a 30 year old Glow Green Evil Eye out of the box, hit it with the UV flashlight to charge it up, and it took our last fish! It was fun to see old and new techniques being utilized effectively in parallel.
That said, I feel like we're turning the corner and better things are to come! It also doesn't hurt that every day there are more and more salmon making their way into Mexico Bay as they prepare for their annual spawning journey up the local tributaries! So, until next time, tight lines to all!
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