Species 18

Smallmouth bass were our primary targets at Lake Ontario today, and they clearly dominated the catch Still, when a few coho salmon decided to bite, Frank Campbell and I sure didn't complain.

The cohos, along with being fast and pretty, provided a nice bonus and for me another species for my annual fish list. Yesterday's first lake trout was also new for this year's list, and I'm pretty sure I'm at 18 fish species. The plan tomorrow is to fish Lake Erie for smallmouth bass. I have smallies well covered, but you never know what might take a bait any given time in the Great Lakes! once while doing the same stuff we'll be doing tomorrow, I actually reeled in a goby!

Laker Fest

Mark Davis of Big Water Adventures had the area of Lake Ontario the lake trout were using and the general technique to use dialed in before ever putting down a line this morning, and it didn't take long for him to figure out the specific drift lines, depths and best baits to maximize the opportunity so it was never long between bites. I don't know how many lake trout we caught and released, but I know it was a lot, and I couldn't begin to guess how many it would have been if we hadn't been working on photos and hadn't stopped early to chase smallmouths around.

I actually came in early because I'd driven all night the night before to get here and had work I needed to wrap up. Mark took Brian Evans back out, and they went right back to catching lake trout like we had been.

Lake trout are fun fish for me to catch because they aren't fish I get to target most places that I fish and simply because they are strong fish that grow really big. Today's first laker also added one more fish to my 2015 species list!

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.