2009 End of the year fishing report for lake Ontario

The weather last year started off with our usual spring weather but quickly took a turn for the worst. Last year on the eastern end of Lake Ontario the weather was rainy and windy. Our spring brown trout fishing was good, but the bigger three year old browns were much harder to catch in 2009 than in previous years. I think that because of the slow summer salmon fishing in 2008 we fished more for brown trout than we did for the hard to find chinook salmon. Consequently we caught so many two year old browns in 2008 that there was a lack of three year old browns in 2009.

The summer salmon fishing in 09 was better than the year before and we spent most of the summer fishing and catching salmon instead of brown trout. When august arrived it brought east winds with it and these contrary winds caused the cold water to well up on the eastern end of Lake Ontario which scattered all of our fish. The first two weeks of August we worked very hard to catch any salmon. But after a couple of weeks the water temperature and the fishing improved and the rest of the month the salmon fishing was okay.

From the first of September until the middle of the month is usually some of the best salmon fishing of the season, but in 2009 it didn't happen that way. Instead of getting better the salmon fishing got worse in the Oswego area. The best concentration of salmon were in the Mexico Bay area and most of the charter boats in oswego moved to the Salmon and Little Salmon River for the balance of the 2009 charter fishing season. Why the numbers of salmon were so low in the Oswego area is unknown but this is the second year in a row that the fall salmon fishing was off. If the same thing happens again in 2010 I have made arrangements for a dock on the Little Salmon River so I can make the move to Mexico Bay sooner than I did this year.

I am quite optimistic about the fishing next season, I am so inclined because of the abundance and the size of the bait fish (alwives). Last season when I was cleaning my anglers catch I would routinely check the stomach contents to see what the fish were feeding on. Most of the time I would find very large mature alwives, and on occasion I also found small rainbow smelt. Finding big alwives in the stomachs of the salmon leads me to believe that the bait fish population in lake Ontario is doing very well and when the bait fish are doing well usually the trout and salmon are also doing well. Last year was the first time in a few years that we caught king salmon that weighed over thirty pounds. These facts make me believe that the 2010 Lake Ontario fishing season should be a good one.

I try to take as many pictures as I can during the course of my charter trips, but because I work alone somedays I don't take as many pictures as I would like to. Click here to see the 2009 Lucky Dutchman Fishing Pictures