Today we were joined by Matt, Eric, and Nick for a day out on Lake Ontario.  The excitement level was high the night before as the guys came down to the boat to say hello and to swap fishing stories.  After a good night's rest, we met at the boat at 5:00am on Saturday.   Just as we were about to push away from the dock....ZAP...we lost power to most everything on the boat.  Not exactly what we had planned.  Jay and I scrambled around as best we could in the pre-dawn darkness and we couldn't find the source of the problem.  Not much of a surprise there; it's dark enough down in the bilge and under the dash during the height of the day let alone an hour before the sun rises.  The good news was that we had both engines running and charging our batteries and we also had our Sonar & GPS so we were pretty sure we just had a blown fuse somewhere.  The bad news was that we were going to have to fish without our Depth Raider speed & temp probe, which we rely on very heavily to help find the temps we're looking for and to maintain the correct down speed for our presentation.  We also didn't have any of our instrumentation on the dash.

Feeling blind without all of our instrumentation, we headed out and set up in 90 FOW just a touch East of the chute.  We had tons of bait in 90-100 FOW and even a few hooks in the mix, so we set up a brown trout program and got down to fishing.  We worked that water for an hour or so without so much as a touch.  One of our friends slid in next to us and ran his temp probe down and said that he had 70 degree water on the bottom in 85 FOW.  OK, time for plan B, that's just too warm.  We turned the boat out towards deeper and hopefully colder waters and just as we hit 200 FOW our low diver fires and we're hooked up.  After a brief battle we boated a small 2 lb. King and the guys decided to send him back into the lake so he could grow up and make someone else's day in a couple more years.  That diver was out 210' on a .5 setting and was pulling a Green Double Crush Glow Spin Dr./ Sigg's Rigs Green Hypnotist fly.





After that fish we kept working our way out towards deeper water and we found a few suspended bait pods and a few small hooks in between 220-240 FOW, so we decided to work that area for a bit.  We kept trying different speeds in an effort to make up for the loss of our probe, but nothing seemed to work.  We just couldn't get the rods to fire.  Looking back on it I wish I had rigged up a thumper rod and ran it down the chute to give us at least some indication of down speed but I was determined that we could figure it out with a little help from our friends on other boats with probes and by watching the angle on our rigger cables.  Hindsight is 20/20.  Man did I feel blind out there.

We worked our way out to 300+ and just as the thunderstorms rolled in we had our 600' copper pulling a Chrome Frog Spin Dr./Sigg's Rigs Super Lime Glow Pulse fly fire.  As we were hooked up we could see two or three water spouts starting to form in the surrounding clouds.  I was at the wheel  and had us headed into the wind so I didn't snap any pics, but it sure was an ominous looking sky and it was a lot bumper than the below pic makes it look.  We worked as quickly as we could to boat the fish as there were some pretty nasty thunderstorm cells in the area. 



As soon as the fish hit the deck the heaviest of the cells moved in and we just skirted it to the North.  What is it with us being hooked up on 600' of copper when there's lightning in the sky?  That's the second time that's happened this year and I hope it's the last!



We stayed out for a while longer in an effort to put one or two more fish in the box, but to no avail.  We gave it our best shot under difficult circumstances, but the few fish we marked didn't seem to want to cooperate today. 

After we got back to the dock we starting trying to troubleshoot our power outage.  Chris Drogi from Anchor Resort stopped by to help us out and he ultimately found that a simple 30 amp fuse that was located away from all the other fuse blocks down behind one of the engines had blown.  I'm not sure why that fuse is located where it is, but it sure did handcuff us today.  I'm headed to the auto parts store right now to pick up a few extras to have on hand.  Thanks for all your help today Chris.  I really do appreciate it.

All in all, we really did have a lot of fun out with our crew today even though the catching was less than we all hoped for.  We're looking forward to fishing with you guys again next year.  Thanks for a fun day guys!

Until Next Time,
Fish On!!

~Capt. Bill