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Fish Doctor Charters
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Date Posted: 13:20:12 05/03/01 Thu
Lake Ontario Bite has Started
After an agonizingly long winter, surface water temperature on Lake Ontario in the Mexico Bay/Oswego area
has finally warmed to the low 50's near shore. Brown trout, lakers, and a few cohos, rainbows, and kings are
presently being taken.
Yesterday, May 1, was one of the best days so far this season for browns. The crew aboard the Fish Doctor
limited out on browns up to 13 lbs. by midmorning, trolling in 12-16 feet of water near Oswego. A couple of
spring cohos were also boated. Stickbaits on the boards and spoons on the riggers were the secret. A
variety of colors of Smithwicks in the 4 1/2" and 3 1/2" sizes are producing fish along with our favorite,
Eppinger Flutterdevles in hammered silver with various color or tape stripes. Try black and silver or blue
and silver in clear water, and silver or hammered silver with brighter color stripes in slightly turbid water.
The midmorning bite lasted from 8:00 AM until 10:00 AM and it was over. Every brown we cleaned was
stuffed with adult alewives. Oswego Harbor and Cemetery Bay are loaded with alewives and predators,
including cormorants.
West of Oswego Harbor at Ford Shoals fishing was good for browns and a few good sized kings were
reported.
In late morning, we moseyed out to deeper water and took some lake trout flat on bottom at about 150'.
You'll also find a few browns, cohos, and steelhead in the top 40 feet of water in the same area. The hottest
setup for the lakers are S&S spinners trailed with an F-7 Flatfish, or dodgers and Howie flies.
Great news for Lake Ontario anglers is the lack of lamprey attack marks on salmonids in the eastern basin
this year. On May 1, the largest laker we boated was exactly 15 lbs., and it didn't have a single lamprey mark,
neither old scars nor fresh wounds. This was unheard of in previous years. This isn't the first completely
clean jumbo sized laker we've seen this season. The two largest browns, 12 and 13 pounders, were also free
of fresh lamprey wounds, although the larger fish did have a couple of old scars. Considering that a
lamprey grows from about 6 inches to 24 inches in 12-18 months, and consumes about 40 lbs. of fish(mostly
salmonids) in the process, a decrease in lamprey predation on salmonids this season is great news for the
fishery. The lamprey control program is working!
--
Fish Doctor Charters
http://www.fishdoctorcharters.com
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