Cooperation

When everyone or everything works in unison incredible things can happen. When variables decide to work against one another like oil and water, disaster is eminent. This week at GTO was a week dependent upon cooperation. Cooperation of schedules, cooperation of conditions, presentations, fish activity, you name it things had to line up like Jupiter and the fifth moon from Saturn for us to land a fish.

We were supposed to have three team members attack to niagara again this week, but come Monday morning we were down to two. Josh and myself made our way to Niagara Falls early on in the day so we were sure not to miss a feeding or any high steelhead activity. A deep freeze had moved into the WNY area late last week and was supposed to have moved on by Sunday before our trip, but here we were lugging our gear down into the niagara gorge in a balmy 20 degree temps with 15-20 mph winds making it feel like 10. As we started our decent we quickly realized ice was going to be a contender today. The river was filled with ice chunks breaking off the falls, but was clear, real clear. The current wasn't too bad and we only had one guest with us today. No boats to contend with, we had 200 yds of the bank to ourselves....

And we casted and we floated and we quickly spent the entire today switching setups and hoping and praying and casting.

We were skunked again, but not only were we skunked the three other guys we seen fishing that day were skunked. I witnessed one fish, a lake trout of ok size was caught by a gentleman during the morning on a huge white and pink buck tail jig. That would be it for the entire gorge that day as we talked to more than a done anglers, from multiple access sites along the gorge. The whirlpool and devils hole were full of ice making any sort of fishing impossible and all the way to art park had no action. Zero. Notta. Not a single fish. Plenty of stories of good strikes, but no one landed a fish but one gentleman? Were we all horrible fisherman? I think not,but if we could we would definitely appreciate some more COOPERATION from all factors involved next week in GTO land.

Sunday schmooze

Tomorrow we take to the river that flows from the Niagara.

We skunked once 7 days before, shame on the conditions.

Silver headed ballet battle is what we strive to achieve.

Run of the drag,

screech of the reel.

Addiction is a disease some say. GTO hopes there's no cure for such a disease.

Afflicted....

So we've been like your estranged brothers

It's true we have been gone for ten months. It's true that we wrote and published one entry in this brand new blog and then ran away to the woods to hunt and fish. You're all right and we apologize. We have decided here at team GTO to take things a little more seriously this year and that includes all of our social media outlets. If you follow along on twitter @grillingGTO you have gotten some updates and some photos throughout 2012, now we promise at least a blog a week so you can follow along at home on our adventures throughout WNY enjoying the outdoors.

So starting things off for the new year in blog land we'll talk about last week in GTO life. We've been fishing hard in the WNY area for steelhead and big brown trout in Lakes Erie and Ontario's amazing tributaries. Affectionately known as part of steelhead alley locals know you can hook up with some amazing fish throughout the winter months. Last week took us to the niagara river where action had been hot for the last couple of weeks with some large steelhead, brown trout, and lake trout haven been taken in the last 3 weeks. Most of these fish in the 6-8 lb range with some exceeding 15 pounds.

Expecting good action after striking out in a complete blizzard the week before we arrived to an mid sixties gentleman battling a beautiful chrome dome. After watching the fight go on and the elder statesman become the victor I was pumped to land me a big ole niagara river monster. There was a crowd of bank anglers and a half dozen boats drifting the mighty niagara and for hours we all enjoyed the beautiful weather and that's about it. Of the twenty guys I watched fish either from boat or bank this morning had the same exact luck, cast and tug, cast and drift, cast and nothing. Except a break in the action, could the feeding be coming,
"gentleman fish on", Gary states
Three GTO guys, two hikers, and a few Canadian geese watched as Gary pulled in an amazing 24-26 inch beautifully gold fish colored CARP!!!!
A carp, middle of February fishing artificial chubs in the niagara river under a float and we walked away with a carp that we graciously gave back.

After this omen we had to move on so we packed up, hiked out of the gorge and moved up north to the amazing little town of Lewiston and fished the niagara gorge below Artpark state park. This location wasn't as crowded and we were all able to have our own little spot on the river as there were only two other bank guys and only two drifters for the mile long area that we occupied. A couple of great strikes and bait taken. A couple average sized chromers landed by others within eye sight, but nothing for team GTO. Another strike out two weeks in a row, but were back on the trail again next week......

Bill