Lake Ontario Salmon Fishing

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• published: 26 Feb 2015
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It’s no secret charter captains had to work extra hard to catch salmon on Lake Ontario during the summer of 2014. It was a frustrating year for even the more experienced trollers. Abnormal weather conditions take credit for much of the melee. It seems, most likely, much colder than normal lake temperatures, a slow developing summer, late ice out and other factors could possibly have the salmon confused. Regardless, patterns weren't normal. And, fish counts were down on the eastern edge of Lake Ontario. Meanwhile, after this outing hope had been restored on the big lake. Following months of scattered success, signs of larger schools of salmon showed off the Port of Oswego the week we fished. Many guides scored limits (that’s three salmon, per angler here) and noticed a fresh pods of salmon moving into the area. Strikes came more frequent than they had the previous four months. Fortunately, Team Pautzke was in town to film Pautzke Outdoors with pro staffer Troy Creasy of High Adventure Sportfishing, a man who's always in tune with where the fish are and consistently puts his clients on the largest salmon around. What surprised me most was the number of charter boats tied to slips. This was prime time. Normally, most of them are running two trips a day. Consequently, business was down in 2014, partially due to media reports of poor fishing. During our outing Creasy found salmon and lots of them, within a mile of the dock. And, these fish are big. In fact, the next morning Pautzke pro Andy Bliss caught a 30-pound king (verified by NY Department of Environmental Conservation) on Creasy’s boat with us. Being September, salmon move in closer to shore for several reasons, the most important being it’s about time to spawn in the Salmon, Oswego, Little Salmon River, etc. They are beefing up on alewives before their journey upriver. Everyone is using three methods to catch them, as they normal do: spoons, trolling flies and brined bait. In fact, most guys run them together. While on Creasy’s boat we didn’t run any of the Michigan Stinger or Dreamweaver spoons, but did mix it up with plenty of Atomic trolling flies alongside filleted herring, placed in a Rhys Davis Cut Bait Head and dragged with Pro Troll E-Chip flashers, the eight and 11 inch models. Many boats are running blue and purple brine, but Creasy is big into Natural Fire Brine this summer. Early and late we used natural before switching to Chartreuse Fire Brine baits when the sun came out. The bites came more often than I expected. We caught a dozen salmon on brined bait and trolling flies. Most ran 22-27 pounds, with none smaller than 20. Creasy has picked up a few coho lately, but we didn’t see any. For more info on Creasy’s Lake Ontario summer Chinook salmon trips please visit www.highadventurefishing.com. To Learn More About Pautzke Bait: http://www.pautzke.com Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pautzkebait