Follow the Shore

Mike Kelley of Flambeau with a Lake Ontario
steelhead that hit a Yo-Zuri 3DB Minnow.

Follow the shore. That was our approach on Lake Ontario this morning. Actually we paralleled the shore a modest distance out, with Gregg LaMere keeping the boat over 7 to 9 feet of water. It's a food chain thing.That's where the midges are hatching, so that's where the smelt are. And where you find smelt, well... you know!

We matched the smelt with Yo-Zuri 3DB Minnows, trolled about 100 feet back with a couple of the lines spread out on each side with planer boards. The simple approach definitely did the job. Although winds kicked up ahead of an approaching storm and chased us away around mid-day, we still caught about a dozen fish, which included roughly an equal mix of brown trout and steelheads, plus a single smallmouth bass.

I caught a couple of browns and a couple of steelheads, and while neither steelie was particularly large, I was extra glad to catch them because that's a new addition to this year's species list, and a kind of fish that's far from a given on any given year's catch list.

Something else cool about today was that while I've fished the Niagara River region on three previous trips (each for two or three days) the fishing we did today was unlike anything else I have done. The diversity of the fishery and the types of angling opportunities in this area continue to amaze me.