Lake Champlain United - Forums

The smile says it all.

Beautiful fish Ron!

Looking forward to any updates!

Matt

Thank Matt! Your trip to Alaska was amazing! Lots of memories there and you fished as much as you could!


Here is a short video of a battle with a 28 lb King. We missed the weigh-in deadline by 30-45 minutes for the 8 pm daily cut-off. A potential 2nd or 3 rd place fish in the July Summer month long derby. We released it after weighing it. We had another Steelies 33" weighed 9 lbs 14 oz just missing the weigh in minimum of 10 lbs for the derby a day later. Potential 10th place fish! Released that one too. Some amazing fish and weather! World class fishery!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hhicEy0PMI&t=2s

Nice job ron,be thankful you got your trip in July cause it’s done nothing but blow every couple days all of august!!!

Hello Ron,
Excellent video of the catch and release of that beautiful King!! I had plans of going back over this August but life got in the way and had to cancel. Last year was my first and we caught a few nice ones in spite of fishing through small craft advisories. Given your experience and knowledge can you guesstimate the weight of this 34” King to put our ongoing banter to rest once and for all? One of us says 15# and all the way up to 30#. I was rather unprepared with no scale and my Champlain net was to small for a larger one, you can guess what happened…
Thanks!
Pat

Nice one, Mistress. I'd say around 18-20lbs. We caught several that size this year on my annual trip (during the blows of August, of course ... couldn't fish for 3 straight days with waves up to 13'!). Also landed one beauty that was 24lbs. Funny thing is I've weighed a lot of salmon and never once put a ruler on one!

Thanks Crayfish, perfect answer and will end the back and forth amongst us. The fish went from the boat to the public cleaning station at Wright's Landing and never got scaled. As far as the King we could not get into the net and lost because it was to big and net to small we will say it weighed 30# (In reality I think it was probably lost because of the 6' swells we were in and it prob. weighed about the same, but you know...)
Pat

I know all about that, Pat!! I was standing in the back of my buddy's 26' Thompson with 10' beam cranking everything in because it too rough ... and looked UP at the wave coming in on us! Wow. I wouldn't have wanted to be in anything smaller, that's for sure.

I've been going over every year for a week to fish with my buddy (who's been doing this for 30+ yrs) for at least 10yrs now. I've caught a lot of salmon with him and only 1 was a true 30#er. Anything over 25# is in "special" category.

I had heard how quickly Ontario can change and experienced it. The day we lost “the big one” it was a bit lumpy when we went out at first light and by 10:30 we saw 4 or 5 charters heading back in. We figured their clients got sea sick like our friend Vinny who was aboard the Mistress and kept fishing in 6’ swells with 10 second intervals. By 1:00 they were 6-7 second intervals and sloppy with an occasional 8’. We were 9 miles from the dock and it took us just over an hour to get back in. Made sure the scuppers were clear and we got soaked but she handled it fine. When we got into the marina one of the charter caps that watched us come through the breakwater informed us they posted a small craft advisory earlier and that was why the charters went back in. I am used to ocean marine forecasts that typically post an advisory well in advance. Lesson learned!

First time I have seen this Pat! Photo's are very hard to judge. Some look big and some look small. Many fish this year were sub 20 lbs. Trend. Lots of fun! 24 lbs. and up was a very nice benchmark big fish! Almost like 30 lbs was 30-40 years ago. Your right many of us never put a tape measure to a king!

I googled this chart from the In-Fisherman:



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Thanks for hunting down more info on King weights Ron, and it was nice to meet you in person by chance at Perkins yesterday. Hopefully the fish gods were good to you! The chart seems to be right in line with what others are guesstimating for weight and now we have a target weight of 16# to beat next season (baby steps for King rookies )
Pat