2010 a very challenging year

Over the years I have always said that the most important factor influencing fishing is the weather and in the 2010 season the weather had a huge affect on the fishing in Lake Ontario. The weather started to influence our fishing in the winter of 2009 / 2010 which was extremely mild in upstate New York. Last winter there was less than normal snowfall and warmer than normal temperatures and ice out occurred in early March. Most years when we launch the boats and start fishing, the rivers and creeks flowing into the lake are full of runoff from the snow melting and the spring rains, but the spring of 2010 was an exception. With no runoff and little rain the usually fantastic early spring brown trout fishing was mediocre at best. The browns would move into the near shore water but because there was no runoff there was nothing to hold them in the shallow water, so they would move back out into the lake and we would have to hunt for them. This made every day in the early spring a challenge. Because the brown trout didn’t want to cooperate we had to figure something else out to do, so we reached into our bag of tricks and pulled out the old cowbells and went lake trout fishing. The lakers we caught weren’t as big as they used to be in the old days, but it was better than not catching.

June fishing was better than usual

In April and May the rainfall was way below average and this didn’t change until June, when it went from unusually dry to unusually wet which improved the fishing. From Oswego we were catching a mixed bag of fish, some browns, a few steelhead / rainbows, and a few salmon. During June we were fishing anywhere from ten feet of water for browns, out to a couple of hundred feet of water for salmon and steelhead and on the days we fished we were boxing from eight to ten fish.

Late Summer Early Fall

As the summer progressed the temperatures started to climb and the west winds started to blow. We had many days in late summer where we couldn’t fish because of the high waves. Not only did these winds cause big waves they also blew the warm surface waters to the east end of the Lake and this pushed the thermocline very deep. I remember some days after a blow where we would have 72 degrees on the surface and 120 feet down on a downrigger we would still have 72 degrees. The high winds and the warm temperatures again made it very challenging to catch fish, but by fishing 135 to 140 feet down we still managed to catch fish.

Fall Salmon Season

Usually in August we fish for salmon and we don’t target other species, but last year with all the warm water and with the constant west winds we had to change our strategy. Early in the month we fished for brown trout instead of king salmon. These browns were some of the biggest we caught all season weighing in anywhere from 5 pounds up to 10 or 12 pounds with the occasional fish in the teens. In September the browns being a fall spawner quit biting. Usually this isn’t a problem because we are fishing for salmon, but this year the unrelenting west wind kept the salmon offshore and very deep where we couldn’t find them. Not only was the wind against us but 3 years ago there was a drought in upstate New York. That year the water in the Salmon River got so low that the fish couldn’t make it up the river and the hatchery couldn’t collect all the salmon eggs they wanted. Because of the low water there was also no wild reproduction from the river. These factors all contributed to the tough salmon fishing in 2010. In October the weather made the river fishing challenging with heavy rains which put the river at flood stage. During this high water we had some guys from Virginia staying with us at the lodge and in 7 days those 6 guys landed 380 fish between them. They proved that if you don’t give up and if you adapt to the conditions you can have a good time in spite of poor conditions.
In the 23 years that I’ve been chartering I have seen some tough times but things have always turned around and I’m sure that the fishing will turn around again. In fact there were a number of signs that things are getting better. One sign was the large number of 1 year old salmon that we caught last spring and summer, another good sign was the large size of the adult salmon which indicates that there is plenty of bait fish. At the risk of sounding like a broken record the weather last year was not our friend, but as I am writing this report in late December Syracuse is going to set a record for the amount of snowfall and if the rest of the winter is normal, I will be a happy fisherman come next spring.