Did a suicide run up to fish some small Ontario tribs Saturday in the quest of some big brownies. We ran into a blizzard just as we hit 90 west of Syracuse. Must have dropped 6 inches of snow in about an hour. Lots of spinouts and cars in the ditch. Had a guy spinout directly in front of us. You should have seen his face when he saw Jim's Surburban coming right at him. Fortunately, we missed. Cruised at 15 mph and made it thru. Got to Sodus Bay and there was just a light dusting on the ground. Talk about lake effect.

Hit a few streams. Some were flowing, some were only a trickle. Some had fish and some didn't. We did manage to catch about a dozen, including a 12lb steelie. Biggest brown was about 10lbs.

Air temp was 18 degrees, windchill brought it down close to zero. Couldn't take many pics cause my camera battery froze after about 2 hours. So did my cell phone battery. The streams were icing over as we were fishing, which forced us to move alot.

Talk about football browns, look at the football bows we were catching.

I walked up behind a female brownie dropping eggs into her redd with a male right at her side milting them. So cool to watch. Then I noticed 3 bows, like the one in the pic, gobbling up all the loose eggs. So, I put on an orange egg pattern under a float and casted a few feet in front of the spawning browns. I watched as my egg tumble down over the female's back and as soon as it past her tail WAM!!! "Fish On". Caught all 3 bows. 5 casts and 3 fish, it's gonna be a great day. Unfortunately, those were the only spawners we saw all day. But we did manage to hookup about once an hour. Mainly cause our hands were in our pockets much of the time. Jim got one female brownie to hit but the rest just wanted to be left alone and would go up under the ice when they saw us. The male brownies were more active and many would chase or check out our flies but only a few were takers. Egg patterns (natural and orange) and sacks (chart and pink) worked the best. The female brownie took a #14 BH pheasant tail.

Between every cast I had to break the ice off my fly line. That gets old quick.

Stopped to get a quick look at the lake. It is low. A local guy told us it's down at least a foot. He even told us about 2 little known streams to try. A lot of nice people up there.

Had lunch at the Pickle. If you're ever in the area you gotta try their pizza.

Only saw 3 other guys fishing all day. Probably out hunting.

All in all, a pretty good day.
Cdog

Attached Thumbnails