Published: August 02, 2008 11:51 pm      

OGNIBENE: Some tips on catching salmon

COMMENTARY

With a new page on the calendar, summer’s midpoint is behind us and although we will get more summer-like weather, thoughts of fall are just beginning to creep into the picture. You may have noticed school busses on the road as newly hired drivers practice their routines and learn routes. Out in Lake Ontario Chinook and Coho salmon are beginning to stir restlessly and it won’t be long before they gather in schools before heading upstream in most of the streams along the shoreline of the lake to spawn. It is the time of year many wait anxiously for in the hopes of catching the trophy fish of a lifetime.

Before you start making plans to go salmon fishing from the shoreline of the Niagara River or in Devil’s Hole, you might be interested in knowing the salmon fishing at present time isn’t half bad. You will have to go out into deep water to get at them, but they’re there. There isn’t any sense in saying they can be found in a particular depth simply because they were there yesterday. By today they could be miles away and at an entirely different depth. Here is where a good fish finder comes in handy.

A fish finder, simply a sonar that echoes bottom and whatever might be in between, will tell you the approximate depth the fish are at. You can buy fish finders with all the latest whistles and bells and spend money that isn’t necessary. An inexpensive unit will show you depth and the fish in between, what more could you ask for. There are units that show a “window” within the water column. Who cares? All you want to know is at which depth to lower your lure in the hopes of connecting with a fish. Many fishermen use global positioning units to pinpoint areas where they caught bass or walleye in the past in hopes those fish will still be hanging around. A GPS unit might get you back to where you were catching fish recently, but there is no guarantee the fish will be there.

Salmon, unlike walleye or bass, don’t hang around structure and venture out to find something to eat once or twice a day. Salmon are on the move most of the time following baitfish. They are a big fish with big appetites, but stop feeding when they begin their spawning run. Most of us believe salmon strike a lure out of anger rather than hunger. It isn’t too early to check over your salmon fishing gear and maybe put some fresh line on heavy weight rod and reel combo. We will be giving some tips on rods, reels, line and whatever else you might need to fish for salmon in an upcoming column.

A favorite spot for shore salmon fishermen is the fishing pier at the base of the Robert Moses Power Plant. It’s a great spot to not only catch salmon, but to photograph them as they leap out of the turbulent water. The pier will be closed as of Monday for yearly maintenance work and will reopen August 23, and that is approximately when the first sightings of salmon in the lower Niagara River are reported. The shore fishing will not get into high gear until fall is in the air and I, or Bill Hilts, will alert you.

You will be happy to learn the walleye fishing in the lower Niagara River is good and will get better. A trip out last Wednesday with Mike Fox saw walleyes and bass come into the boat. We used worm harnesses and fished in roughly 45-foot depths just scraping bottom with a two-ounce weight. A Kwik-fish lowered close to bottom should work in that strong current too. That’s the lure that catches rainbows and browns all winter and should work on walleye as well. Surprisingly the walleye slammed the worm the same as the bass did. Let no one say that a walleye the weighs more than three pounds doesn’t put up a fight in the lower Niagara’s current. The location was the old timer’s favorite, the Stella Drift. The drift begins upstream of Stella Niagara school and ends at roughly the first point of land downstream. It would be wise to have an Ontario, Canada, license in your pocket because you might start the drift in U.S. water, but could end up in Canadian. If you do fish on the Canadian side of the river be on watch for that annoying jet boat that zooms through often. I wonder if the tourists on board believe they are on a “death defying” ride when they spot 17-foot fishing boats in Devil’s Hole.

We mentioned the fantastic ring-necked pheasant hunting in South Dakota in a recent column and here is another interesting statistic about those birds. The 12 million pheasants in South Dakota are direct descendants from six birds that were stocked 100 years ago near Redfield. South Dakota plans a late season pheasant hunt to commemorate the anniversary of the bird’s introduction. Pheasant hunting in South Dakota is a $219 million industry. At one time our end of New York had great pheasant hunting, but it all disappeared about 50 years ago. Pheasant hunting around these parts is now put and take and no way compares with what we once had. We’ll go into more on that in a future column.

If the fishermen taking part in the tournament out of Buffalo on Lake Erie had slowed down a bit they wouldn’t have suffered such a bad time in the wind and waves. Just because you have more than 150 horses on the back end of the boat doesn’t mean you have to use all of them at once. Nether of our lakes are like those dinky, man-made ponds they call lakes down south. I wonder if any of them had a drift anchor to slow them over a hot spot. Would have helped.

Joe Ognibene is a local sportsman who has covered the outdoor scene since 1957.