Getting ready?

[Doc]

You guys all have your tackle boxes and fishing gear all organized and ready to go. Guys have been trying for the crappies down in the old West River Marina down by Naples. And the bullhead will be biting pretty darn soon. And of course we are right on the eve of trout season. I'm all set.

[airedale]

I am chopping at the bit, going to clean some fish the way I did when I was a kid, no filleting, just gutting and scaling. Picked up an cordless electric scaler, hope it works as well as the old corded job I used many years ago.

Al 

[wolc123]

I started getting ready last weekend.  With the help of my brother in law and nephew, we got the docks in and lined up at the in laws place, up in the Dacks.  The lake had finally thawed out the previous week.  We had 4 hours daylight and just above freezing temperature and no rain on  Saturday.

I also got thru the break in procedure on the new Mercury 4 stroke 5 hp outboard, that he picked up to replace his old Johnson 2 stroke 5.5 hp, which I had sieved up last October.  It took a lot of pulls to get that new Mercury to fire up the first time, but after that, it started with the first pull every time.  
 

To kill time breaking it in, under half throttle for the first hour, I trolled a diving crankbait around the lake several times.  Lake trout haven’t been stocked there in over 20 years and I haven’t seen any in 10, but you never know if a holdover survived.  No hits though.  
 

After that, I tried casting a bucktail jig a little for perch, but no hits there either.  They’ve always been few and far between on that lake.  Most of the hard spring work is done up there now, so I’ll be able to focus more on fishing and turkey hunting, the next run we visit in May.  
 

I plan to start working on my bigger boat at home in WNY next weekend, and maybe have it ready for some shoreline trout trolling out on Lake Ontario, the weekend after that.  
 

[greg54]

3 hours ago, Doc said:

You guys all have your tackle boxes and fishing gear all organized and ready to go. Guys have been trying for the crappies down in the old West River Marina down by Naples. And the bullhead will be biting pretty darn soon. And of course we are right on the eve of trout season. I'm all set.

There is the annual bullhead derby April 4-6 in Wilson and I remember eating them when I was kid, catching them at family summer cottage on Lake Ontario.