Four of us travelled up to Lake Ontario - Point Breeze - again last weekend. Left the house at 4 am on Thursday knowing we needed an alternator for the boat. Called dealers in the Rochester area thinking we could pick one up - no deal. Called dealers in Buffalo and the best I could get 3 - 5 days. So we continued on. I needed a nav light bulb for the port side so we went to Lake Breeze Marina for a bulb. They asked if there was anything else and I said not unless you have an alternator. He didn't have it but told me he could have it the next day - so i told him go for it.

We nursed the alternator by only running at idle speed, keeping an eye on the voltmeter and fishing right outside the harbor. We managed to pick up two brown trout - one at 12-1/2 pounds and one at 9 pounds as well as a 7 pound king. The browns went into the freezer whole so my taxidermist son could take them home for replica mounts. The king went back to swimming.

Next morning we repeated what we did on Thursday evening and managed two brown trout and another king. We were back at the slip at 11:30 so the engine could cool down for the anticipated 12:30 UPS delivery. As I was retrieving our trolling spread, the housing for one of our Cannon downriggers broke and I was holding a downrigger hooked to a 15 pound weight by the crank handle. I called out to the crew for help and we managed to get everything back. Fortunately that part has a lifetime warranty and the downrigger will be rebuilt. Unfortunately we had to wait until 4:30 for the big brown truck to arrive at the marina with the parts delivery. I got the alternator changed out and we were headed out to 150 feet of water for the evening troll by 5:15 pm. We managed a 10 lb steelhead and four decent kings to 13 pounds that evening - keeping three for the box.

Saturday we headed out to 300' of water to start our troll. We ran over good bait and marks in about 150', but continued on. We trolled to nearly 500' where we turned around to get back to the marks we saw in the morning. We found fish between 350' and 300' and picked up a few on a SE troll. We repeated that loop several times that day again picking up fish on a SE troll. We had our best day ever with wire divers pulling spin doctors and flies. Colors did not matter as long as we had our Walker 107s out 310 on a 2 setting. We also lost a record number of fish with crossovers and cutoffs as well as just plain old pulled hooks on the wires. In all we landed 13 fish to 21 pounds and lost 10 others. We also had four runoffs with no one home when we got to the rods. We pulled our gear and headed back to port at 3 pm, tired but happy. We kept 9 fish that made a fishbox of around 100 pounds. We will be back to the big lake for our last trip of the season in next week. Then we will be preparing for fall trolling again on the Chesapeake.