This past weekend we payed a little visit to our neighbors to the north ๐จ๐ฆ fishing the King Of The Lake tournament out of St Catherines, Ontario. Team Nemesis consisted of Manny, Donny and Bite Force Fishing (Ryan and Jackson).
Unlike many KOTL spring tournaments, there were plenty of hungry ๐ฆ around. The Lake Ontario king salmon bite is on ๐ฅ right now! The fish this year also seem to be a larger class than years past.
4/25/24 - 4/26/24 prefishing days
Our objective was to:
1. make the lake smaller
2. have multiple areas to fish
3. find big fish
We spent time fishing different areas while paying attention to temps, techniques, and baits in hopes to devise a plan for game day. We fished from 20' out to 330'. In the skinny water we used a mixture of plugs and spoons that were productive. Although the bite was stellar, it seamed like we would weed through a lot of small to medium sized fish in shallower. In the deeper water spoons and meat rigs did well for us. Surface temps below 44.7 degrees ๐ฅถ seemed to be the delineation between productive and unproductive water. 46.3 degrees on the surface was our most productive surface temps. Days consisted of 40+ bites to keep the crew busy. The spring kings were extra fiesty and our landing percent was at an unacceptable 50%... not tournament grade ๐ฅ.
4/27/24-4/28/24 tournament day
High NE winds๐จ cut our fishing fun a bit early on prefish Friday. Theoretically the NE wind should compact the Niagara river plum and make fishing a shootout. We found our temps and a nice temp break that was holding hungry salmon. It wasn't long before we were looking for upgrades. Most of our fish were caught 20' down to 100'. Riggers and Team Dreamweaver divers were the choice instruments of salmon demise. Learning from our prefishing mistakes we got rid of "limpy" rods to drastically increase our landing percentages. Day 1 highlights included our biggest salmon of the week weighing in at just under 21#. After day 1, we were 5th amongst a field of 58.
Day 2, the SE winds of change cometh and had everyone second guessing their game plans for the final day. We needed a good box again to climb the leader board. Before setting up we did a fair amount of scanning for temps and other signs of life. Our initial spot was a bit colder and void of life so the search continued until we found warmer water with a few hooks mixed in. We deployed the arsenal and it was game on! Day 2 gave us a few more headaches than the previous day. On 2 occasions I found myself on the swim platform netting a couple of our tournament grade fish that were wrapped in divers and other lines... what a fire drill, but we got them both! At weigh in our respectable box gained us 3 positions to earn 2nd out of 58 boats in the overall KOTL, 2nd in the high performance division, and 2nd in the big shooter division!
Congrats to fellow Erie team Pacific Time on the win. Its worth noting Erie teams took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd! #ErieStrong ๐ช๐ช๐ช
Another great start to the season. Hopefully we can keep it going!
