We are currently riding a wave of positive vibrations that would make the Beach Boys proud. In many respects, these are the “good old days” as we grow older. What the future holds for these unique natural resources is anyone’s guess, but it’s a good guess that fishing will continue in a positive trend…for now.
In 2024, there were nine different pen rearing projects in place for stocking salmon and trout. That included nearly 823,000 Chinook salmon and over 70,000 steelhead in the pens, with many coordinated through fishing clubs and charter captains. Captain John Gaulke displays a king.
Lake Ontario is the number one draw for fishermen, both residents and nonresidents, when it comes to casting, trolling, or drifting in New York. At the top of the list of species is the mighty Chinook salmon, the “king” for these waters. A variety of trout are also sought after by fisher folks. And in the world of bass fishing, it doesn’t get much better than the St. Lawrence and eastern Lake Ontario when Bassmaster gurus detail its annual rankings for the top fisheries across the country. It was number one again in 2024 after dropping to number two last year.
When you add in the tributaries for lake Ontario, you can see why we enjoy year-round fishing for a wide variety of fish species that attract the attention of a diverse group of anglers. There is something for everyone—young and old; novice or seasoned angler; families or by yourself.
We are currently riding a wave of positive vibrations that would make the Beach Boys proud. In many respects, these are the “good old days” as we grow older. What the future holds for these unique natural resources is anyone’s guess, but it’s a good guess that fishing will continue in a positive trend…for now.
According to some leading climate change experts, lake surface temperatures are projected to increase by as much as 7 degrees by 2050 and 12 degrees by 2100. Yes, we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves, but when you toss in additional threats from invasive species, pollution, and habitat destruction, it helps to put this all into perspective—just how fragile these ecosystems are and why we need to preserve and protect them. That said, if these “experts” are anything like the meteorologists we’re watching predict the weather every day (or lack of predicting accurately), who knows what we can expect.
Beautiful Lake
Lake Ontario, a shared natural resource between two countries, may have been named after the Iroquois Native American word meaning “beautiful lake” or “sparkling water.” The name appeared on maps for the first time as early as 1656, shortly after the first Europeans called it “Ontario” 15 years before that. Recent polls have ranked the lake as number one in the country as the bluest inland lake.
There is a long and storied history in this Great Lake, a body of water that receives most of its sustenance from the upper four Great Lakes—primarily through the Niagara River as a final conduit. Fish and fishing have been an important component to its history, and it still is today. This year, there were many encouraging signs that painted a brighter picture for anglers as the lake trolling season for salmon and trout began early thanks to a mild winter. An improved forage base allowed fish managers to stock more salmon in the lake and expand the number of stocking sites. Sea Lamprey control is back on track after treatments to control them suffered setbacks during the pandemic years. We are headed in the right direction. If you are a salmon fisherman, the 2023 season was a big one when you look at the Open Lake Creel Survey. Chinook salmon catch rates by fishermen were the second highest in the 37-year history of the survey, 40% above the average. If things continue the current track, it could blow that all away and take over the top spot. Salmon fishing has been phenomenal in 2024.
Captain Frank Campbell with another nice catch.
Atlantic salmon catch rates, while still a smaller piece to the lake’s catching puzzle, saw an 82 percent increase in its catch rate last year. This is an encouraging sign for the future and shows that the management tweaks that have been made by the state’s Bureau of Fisheries may have turned a corner.
In 2024, there were nine different pen rearing projects in place for stocking salmon and trout. That included nearly 823,000 Chinook salmon and over 70,000 steelhead in the pens, with many coordinated through fishing clubs and charter captains. For Chinook salmon, every fish stocked (except for the Salmon River) was reared in pens for three to four weeks to in-crease their survival rates and to help the imprinting process along. This pen rearing process, in place for several years now, may be one of the reasons that the fishing is so good this year.
King salmon stocking efforts were expanded in 2024 in two ways. First, Sodus Bay was added back into the mix of the state’s Chinook salmon stocking strategy. Previously, Olcott, Oak Orchard, Rochester, Oswego, and the Salmon River were the featured ports for kings, with additional stocking taking place in the Black River/Sacketts Harbor and Niagara River. Due to the increase in stocking numbers this year, Sodus Bay has been added back into the lake’s salmon plan. Sodus received 90,000 salmon for the pens, the same number as the Niagara River and Sacketts Harbor. Except for the Salmon River, the other sites received 138,210 salmon at each location.
There was a total of 300,000 fish stocked in the Salmon River through the Salmon River Fish Hatchery in Altmar. They are held in the hatchery longer, until the fish reach the same size as the salmon being held in the pens.
“DEC determined that the best use of the 2024 Chinook salmon stocking increase (137,000-plus) is to re-establish one of the previous stocking sites (Sodus Bay) at 90,000 fish and to make minor increases at the other major stocking sites (12,000-plus)” reports Steve Hurst, Chief of DEC’s Bureau of Fisheries. “From 2020-2023 there has been an approximate 60-mile gap be-tween stocking locations at Genesee River and Oswego River, compared to an approximate 30 miles between stocking sites in other parts of the lake. Adding Sodus Bay back to the stocking list will provide some level of staging and tributary fishing opportunities in an area where there are currently none. Making minor increases to the stocking sites in west and west central lake areas will continue to maintain and potentially improve staging fishing opportunities in these areas.”
Remember that this is a shared resource with Canada and the Province of Ontario will also be stocking more Chinook salmon into the lake based on the management agreement between the two countries. For this year, that amounted to a 15% increase in salmon plantings for our international neighbors.
Joe Clark on left and Captain Joe Oakes with a 37-pound king salmon.
While increased salmon stocking numbers is a positive sign for the future, it is still only a piece to the management puzzle. Lake managers must keep an eye on the big picture, such as with natural reproduction, forage base assessments, and the size of the salmon in the various year classes.
“The predicted alewife biomass is very encouraging, but the size of Chinook salmon indicates there is still uncertainty in the current and future predator-prey balance in Lake Ontario,” reflects Hurst. “Given the predicted alewife biomass, DEC predicts the lake can support an increase in salmon and trout stocking in 2024 despite the lower average size of three-year-old Chinook salmon.”
“However, the size of three-year-old Chinook salmon is reflective of predator-prey balance and growing conditions during the previous three to four years. The predicted alewife biomass indicates that the coming years should have more prey available to Chinook salmon than there was in the previous four years.”
“DEC does not have an estimate on natural reproduction but, on average, the proportion of wild fish in the system can range anywhere between 30 percent and 70 percent. DEC will have a better handle on this proportion moving forward now that the parental-based tagging program has been implemented.”
That program involves taking a genetic sampling of every fish in the hatchery. It will help the agency to identify if a fish being caught is wild or stocked.
“Overall, the tissue sampling has gone well,” says Hurst. “Creel agents will once again take samples from processed fish for biological data. Volunteer anglers working under the direction of Lake Ontario Fisheries Advisory Panel (LOFAP) members will also provide DEC samples. The Canadians have also collected genetic samples from all hatchery brood mothers which contributed eggs to Chinook salmon stocking in the same years as New York and have sampling programs in place to collect samples from adults to evaluate proportions of wild/hatchery in the lake.”
Robert Vazquez and his grand-prize salmon.
LOFAP serves as an advisory body to provide DEC Fisheries Managers with insight and non-binding recommendations on issues within the Lake Ontario fishery. “They have been a great sounding board for ideas and informing DEC’s fishery decisions, including the 2024 stocking strategy,” continued Hurst. “They are also instrumental in performing a citizen science role for DEC by collecting Chinook salmon tissue samples for genetic analysis to help determine the proportion of wild vs. stocked fish. Their feedback and insight on the fishery are extremely valuable. The panel members are truly engaged and eager to participate in the betterment of the fishery.”
The Jig is Up!
With salmon fishing being as good as it’s been in 2024, there are a few diehard salmon fishermen who have taken fishing to a new level by jig fishing for kings. Isaac Nowak of Brockport, NY is one of those anglers who has accepted the challenge.
“For area identification we would use the typical salmon ports to the west that usually hold large numbers of salmon for the summer,” says Nowak. “Ports like Wilson, Olcott, The Oak and Sandy should all be very productive.”
“Depth is very important,” Nowak continued. “Fifty percent of the trip is basically made or lost based on where the salmon want to hold on any given day. We do a lot of checking on various depths to see where the most consistent marks are. Since we are drifting, we will usually break it down in 10-foot increments. Once we get to 90 feet, we would drift 90,100,110-foot and so on until we find the most marks. Some mornings that can be tough.”
The first thing Nowak looks for is almost always bait balls. However, some mornings it doesn’t matter. “They are open water roamers,” said Nowak. “Once you find the zone they want, bait or not, they will be there. I pretty much never worry about locating structure.”
The lure of choice is 2-ounce jigging spoons. Part of fishing philosophy is based on finding a spoon that gets down fast but also flutters well on the drop. “We are actually experimenting with making our own optimal jig designed specifically for this!”
Kevin Guenther with a mighty king salmon.
“Our fishing style is to locate the fish and then make a drop on them,” says Nowak. “Determining fish species is easy once you see how they move on the jig. Salmon will streak hard and fast to check out the jig and usually decide to bite or drop out quickly. Spoons should be worked quick-and-snappy. Be unpredictable and always keep them moving. Static boring jigging at the same depth is not ideal.”
“Good electronics to catch the movement of the fish and jig are critical,” insists Nowak. “So is the speed of the boat on the drift. You can spot lock with your trolling motor—which is fine on windier days. But I prefer a slow drift as you cover more water and then locate more fish. The issue there is line angle which simply means more drops with the jig to stay vertical.”
What’s interesting is that most of the season lots of Nowak’s salmon are very willing to come out of temperature for the jig. “Often this year we will watch kings
‘sharking’ on the surface busting bait when the temperature is down 60 feet!”
“The hit is the best part of this style of fishing,” insists Nowak. “Almost 90% of the time the hit is on the lowest fall point of the jig stroke so when you go to snap back up it’s like running into a brick wall, or they catch you just as you are about to snap up and almost take the rod out of your hand. It’s incredible!”
Nowak likes to use medium-heavy bass rods spooled with 20-pound braid, connected to a 10 to 15-pound fluorocarbon leader. He also uses crankbait snaps that will attach to the spoon.
Capt. John Gaulke with Finger Lakes Angling Zone has used some of his free time to target kings, using the same approach that he uses for lake trout in the Finger Lakes.
With salmon fishing being as good as it’s been in 2024, there are a few diehard salmon fishermen who have taken fishing to a new level by jig fishing for kings. Isaac with a nice jig-caught salmon.
“Jigging kings is becoming more feasible with modern electronics and trolling motors with GPS positioning,” says Gaulke. “Kings usually start the year around the Wilson/Olcott area in the west and then move east, so it’s important to go out of a port that’s in the area where good numbers of salmon are roaming. Usually, fish show up around Oswego in May, but in recent years it’s been as early as March/April.”
“The first thing I like to do is put a temperature probe down and see where the thermocline is at,” says Gaulke. “Once I pinpoint the thermocline, (let’s say it runs from 65 to 90 feet down), I will start searching for fish in areas that bottom out right at the bottom of the thermocline or slightly below – which in this case would be 90-foot. I like to check shallow first, then move out if necessary.”
“Kings are roaming around after bait, so I don’t have too many precise spots, although sometimes a drop-off can produce fish year after year. Keep in mind these fish are swimming constantly, so if they’re in the area, you should run across some. My friend and fellow guide Kurt Hoefig fishes more aggressively and likes to move around in search of bait balls. I tend to take more of a “tree stand approach” and find what I consider to be an “activity zone” and concentrate my efforts there.”
Gaulke doesn’t worry too much about any jigging motion. He will use his sonar to mark the fish. He will try to get their attention then quickly pull the jig away from the fish in hopes of enticing a strike.
“I’ve had good luck this year with 1-1/2-ounce tear drop jig heads with 4/0 or 5/0 hooks on them and just a simple white Lunker City Shaker with a chartreuse tail,” says Gaulke. “Usually, I use a more subtle color, but not during this past July. This year, we had some ridiculous numbers of salmon and bait out of Fairhaven. I asked a client if he was up for it, and he was. We had a slow morning with some light hits and then a lull around midday when we tried some bass fishing. Between noon and when we left at 3:30 p.m., he landed his limit of kings and lost one or two. On that day, you could have just drifted and bounced bottom a few times, then reeled up through the bait and fish, and fish were aggressively chasing. I’m not sure how often that condition sets up, but that was ideal! I’m usually done chasing kings by the time they are staging for the spawn. I know an angler that had some luck late in the season with fish off the mouth of the Salmon River. At that time, jigging bottom a bit might be called for. My favorite time to fish them is May through July.”
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