We'd had a great couple of weeks fishing down in Wilson, but we were really looking forward to fishing in Orleans County this weekend. We've never done well at this tournament in the past and we were committed to doing what it took to get it done this year, including making a 40 mile run back to Wilson to get in on the King fishing that was still good there. We spent Thursday night on the boat in Wilson and had planned to fish there on Friday, but after checking the forecast on Friday morning we decided it didn't look favorable for a 40 mile run over the weekend, so we decided to run east and fish closer to the Oak to try and figure something out closer to that port. We found lots of smaller fish willing to take our baits out in 140-200FOW west of the Oak, but we really didn't feel like that class of fish was going to be big enough to put us in contention over the weekend. To be honest, we didn't have much of a plan B figured out if we couldn't run west but fortunately for us the forecast had changed and it was looking like we could make the run back to the west on Saturday morning. It was either run west on Saturday morning if the weather allowed, or head out of port on Saturday morning and try to figure something out on the fly. Not the best feeling to have the day before a tournament...

Mother Nature cut us some slack on Saturday and we were able to make the run West like we had hoped, although the run was a bit bumpier than the 1' or less that NOAA had forecast. We made it down to 6 mile in about and hour and 15 minutes and set up the same program that we had run the previous weekend at the Niagara Pro-Am - 400, 500, and 600 Blood Run coppers (awesome stuff BTW!), divers out 240-350, and riggers 85-120' deep. We gave up about an hour of fishing time in the morning and we were worried about the weather all day long, but after our first hour of fishing we had 5 good Kings in the boat and it looked to me like we were going to have our 12 in another 90 minutes or so. Unfortunately we then encountered a bad case of the drops and we dumped 4 or 5 more good fish and had to throw back 3 or 4 smaller ones. Then the bite stopped and we had to grind. We only put two more Kings in the boat before 10am and we were all starting to sweat the clock. We knew we needed to be on the road back no later than noon and our bite had dried up. I was convinced that all the boats back at the Oak were hoovering up their 12 fish like they did the day before, and when we saw Cold Steel pull up at 10:30 and run back east I was even more convinced that we were way behind on our numbers. We had a quick team meeting and decided that we needed to get out of there and run back to the Oak to pick up a few "easy" smaller fish like we'd found the day before. We put the hammer down and ran into 2-3 footers out of the East at about 30mph - not a fun ride at all, but the Penn Yan handled it beautifully. We got back to our waypoints from Friday at 12:30 or so and set up our program from the day before to get some of those "easy" fish. Man was I wrong. There were no "easy" fish for us. We pulled two bites in the last 90 minutes of our day, one we dropped and the other was a 16" throw back. We went back to the dock with knots in the pits of our stomachs because we just knew we'd blown it. You gotta love not knowing what everyone else has. Turns out most everyone struggled on Saturday and our 7 fish box put us in 11th place, which was a pretty big surprise for us.

The forecast looked good for another run west on Sunday and we were committed to heading back to do something about our case of the drops from the day before. When we got out to the lake we found perfectly flat water and we let the Penny hum along at 34mph. We made the long run in just over an hour and set up in 140 FOW a mile or so west of where we were the day before. There was a slug of colder surface water from Wilson to 6 mile and we didn't like what we saw at our waypoints from Saturday so I kept pushing west till we found 61 degree surface temps. We ran the same deep program as we had the day before, but we got off to a much slower start. Our first bite didn't come for almost an hour - talk about stress on an already shortened fishing day due to the long run. Once we had that fish in the boat I looped back around in a big circle and we took 2 or 3 more Kings on that troll. As soon as we got back to where we took the morning's first fish we hooked up again and landed another good King. So around the loop we went again, although this time I made a smaller circle in an attempt to get back on that spot sooner. On our third pass over that spot we doubled up and landed both Kings - one on the 88' rigger pulling a pro-chip/Sigg's gangster, and the other on the 400 Blood Run copper pulling a green dot spinny/Sigg's green hypnotist - those two rigs would take over half of our fish on Sunday. As soon as we landed those two Kings back around the loop we went again. We did this for 5 passes, and each time we hit that exact spot we hooked up. It was pretty cool to see on the GPS - we took 6 fish from a spot the size of a postage stamp and each time we looped back around I made the return trip tighter so we could get back to that spot faster. We had our 11th fish in the boat at 11am and then it died for us. We watched three competing boats pull up and leave early (we thought they had all boxed and were going home - again you gotta love no comm!) and we were sweating the clock and the bite again. We never did pull that 12th fish and at noon we pulled gear and pounded our way home into the 3 footers that had come up in the last couple of hours. We had a few minutes left on the clock when we got back to the Oak so we threw a Hail Mary in 40FOW right in front of port hoping to pull something from there, but to no avail. When we got back to the dock it was quickly apparent that most boats had another tough day and we had hopes of moving into the top 10. When it was all said and done we ended up with the comeback of the day and wrapped up the tournament in 4th place. We took a beating and burned a lot of fuel running 80 miles each day but in the end it was worth it for us.





I gotta say that we had a lot more fun as a team under the no communication agreement and it made for some real suspense for us. Not knowing who has what really impacted our decisions over the past two weekends and at times left us feeling like failures because we mistakenly assumed that others were way ahead of us because they pulled up and left our area early. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up to Pete Alex and Vince Pierleoni for spearheading the effort for no communication - we love it and will be signing the agreement for the rest of the year.

It's been a fun two weekends on the west end of Lake Ontario for us and we're looking forward to the last two Pro-ams of the year on the east end. We'll be taking a few weekends off to rest and spend some much needed time with family before we get back after it in July.

That's about it for now - stay tuned for Pro-Am reports in July!

Until Next Time,
Fish On!!

~Capt. Bill