The last 2009 Pro Am tourney was last weekend in sodus new York.
The word was that there were a few kings showing up and the browns were not biting. Last year our team took 5th place and it was all brown trout, there weren’t many salmon around at all. The guys that caught a lot of browns won the money.
We arrived on Friday morning to pre fish. We went after browns and trolled for about y7 hours throwing out every trick I knew and couldn’t get a bite, there was a couple other boats trying and I heard the same no browns caught. We went out deep at about 1pm and trolled kings and caught 1 down about 130 feet.
When we got back to port the reports were people HAMMERING BIG KINGS so we knew in the morning we would be king fishing.

We set up Saturday morning in BIG Waves probably 3-4 feet. We could only troll 1 way we went 12 miles west and just let the wind push us down the lake and then run back and let it push us east again. Our observer got seasick and the rollers increased to a steady 6 feet , 1 boat called out a may day to the coust guard they were taking on water and needed to be rescued. It was flat nasty we were on the verge of calling it a day. But we stuck it out. We went 6 for 6 on nice kings to put us in 27 out of 37 pro boats.

Sunday we went back west and had a steady 3 foot sea all day. It was brutal but wer managed to troll in all directions with the kicker pinned and the big motor in gear as well. It was really hard to fight but we got it done. We had a pretty good handle on the fish from the day before and had identified 2 important areas to hit. We started into the fish immediately. We had 17 kings on but sadly we could only land 8 of them, the biggest was 27.15 pounds and was biggest fish of the day on sunday up until the very end, we also had the biggest steelhead at 8.5 for most of Sundays weigh in but got beaten out. We dropped 3 kings between 25 and 30 pounds within 100 feet of the boat, I had 1 on that was a flat out brute, but we just couldn’t get him to the net, there were a large number of kings caught between 25 and 31 poiunds over the weekend, there are some big fish this season. Most of the other fish we lost were due to the fact that they would hit the inside rod on a turn when the lure would slow down and sink they woukld hit it but there was a slack bow in the line and we couldn’t get good hooksets, it was maddening because we had on all the fish we needed to really do some damage in the standings Sunday. So we brought in 8 fish and pulled us up a spot to 26th place overall for the tourney. The wining boats brought in 12 each day. It is hard being the smallest boat in the pro division. There are many boats 4 times our size. They laugh at a 4 foot sea in a 41 foot Trojan, we get beaten up. But we do have a serious speed advantage when the water is calm, that only happened once. If anybody wants to buy a 35 footer you can be on the team next year!!!
In the 4 tourny’s there was an average of 40 pro division boats competing and our average finish was 25th place so we beat out 15 pro boats on average per tournament. I am not disappointed in that result being my first year as the Captain running this series. I guarantee you the results will be up next year, just having 1 full series under my belt I learned a lot about fishing these tourny’s and the strategy involved. I certainly learned a ton about fishing deep water kings in these last 2 events, something I never did before. I am a lot more comfortable running down 150 feet or more than I was before.

The Kings are in Mexico bay and north dunes area. We took several kings on friday in the north dunes area with the biggest being 26.5 pounds. On Sat. for the LSRC we couldnt get them to go again. Sunday we went BT fishing and killed them with the biggest being 10+ pounds.
The LSRC had a 33.35 pound king weighed in to take big fish. Trout One out of Mike's Marina took the honors for the 2nd year in a row. Great time was had by all