Lower niagara River - Smallies and smiles
I realize I posted this on the Erie board and not the NY board, but I figured you all would enjoy the report.
I'm posting this report a
week late and with
limited photos. I'll explain.
Week late: I broke my ankle the day after we got home. (tried to walk and chew gum at the same time :D ) It's been chaos around here since then. I'm back to work and almost all is good.
Limited photos: The fishing was so good, we didn't want to take the time to stop and snap many.
Friday: This trip started out no different than all of my other trips to the Niagara....with adult beverages and conversation with good friends. Music.....food......beer......friends......hot tub.......how could it get any better?
FISHING!! We made it to bed by 2am (early by our standards).
Saturday: We're on the water by 9am, me & my wife and Capt. Matt & his wife (she wasn't fishing.....just along for the ride). It was a great morning to be on the water, plus the fish were cooperating. We fished from 9a-2p and boated over 30 smallies.
Here's a couple we managed to get pics of:
At 2pm, we headed back to Capt. Matt's for a snack. We tinkered around with the boat and decided to head back out for the evening bite (without the girls).
We got to our spot at 7pm. This was the result of our first cast:
and my second cast:
Then it got a bit slow at out first spot, so we relocated to Devils Hole. 2 drifts in, I hook up with something that wants to take all of my line. after a 15min battle, I bring this beast to the net:
a 19# common carp. It fell for my tube. We managed another 8 smallies after the carp incident for a total of 40 smallies from 7pm-9pm.
Back to the Capt.'s house to unwind a bit. We danced and partied til 3am or so. I really lost track of the time (no news there). On a side note, that yellow fishing shirt I had on earned me the nickname of
Bigbird for the remainder of the night.
Sunday: Somehow we managed to get up and be fishing by 10am. we fished the same spots, but must have hammered them pretty good the night before. we were only able to scrape up another 31 smallies before calling it quits at 1pm.
here's a couple pics.
All fish were caught on either tubes or dropshot, with dropshot baits outproducing the tubes by quite a margain. I think by throwing something different, something the fish aren't conditioned to, I was able to get more bites.
I'm still waiting for Matt to send some more pics from his camera. I believe he called them
"Bigbird in action".