BURR LEWIS This fisherman was out near Russell Station at 6 a.m. to start the 1995 LOC Spring Derby. The LOC Fall Derby gets under way Friday and continues through Sept. 3. At a glance When: The $120,000 Lake Ontario Counties Fall Trout & Salmon Derby begins Friday and runs through Sept. 3 in Niagara, Orleans, Monroe, Wayne, Cayuga, Oswego and Jefferson counties. Awards will be presented at the Roger J. Robach Community Center on Ontario Beach in Charlotte. Payday: The tournament's biggest fish is worth $20,000. First places in the four divisions (salmon, brown, lake and rainbow trout) are each worth $4,000. The Derby pays the top 20 in each division. There are daily bonuses for the largest fish caught. To enter: $25 to register. Ages 11 and under $5. Ages 12-15 can enter as youth ($5) or adult ($25). Youth winners receive Wal-Mart gift cards, not cash. For more information: Call (888) 733-5246 or go to www.loc.org.

By Gary Fallesen
Democrat and Chronicle

(Aug. 12, 2001) --

The bad dreams wash over him like a little kid who just saw Jaws. The mere thought of a lake trout makes him nauseated like a landlubber who is seasick from rough water.

Patients come into Mike Gustin's eye-care office in Webster and see the 28-pound, 1-ounce Chinook salmon he has hanging on the wall. "You won that?" they ask when they learn he caught the biggest salmon in the Lake Ontario Counties Spring Trout & Salmon Derby in April.

"I did and I didn't," he tells them through clenched teeth.

Gustin, 41, caught the biggest salmon in the Spring Derby, but for the first time it was not big enough to take the fishing tournament's grand prize. Lynn Cunningham of Binghamton won that with a 28-pound, 9-ounce lake trout.

"The abuse I've taken from my buddies," Gustin says, joking about the whole matter on the eve of the Fall Derby. "I wish I didn't win that salmon division. I had nightmares for two weeks. I'd see that lake trout looking me in the eye.

"Now my buddies are calling me saying, 'You got beat by a mud puppy?' "

Gustin weathers the teasing well. He can laugh because after fishing in the LOC Derby and its predecessor, the Empire State/Lake Ontario (ESLO) Derby, since the mid-1980s, he
finally won something.

"You don't expect to win; it's for fun," says Gustin, who landed his trophy while fishing from his 24-foot boat, Eye Guy, on the Niagara Bar off Niagara County.

"When you get out first thing in the spring it's a shakedown cruise for your boat. This year was no exception until we got on a big pod of fish."

Gustin was fishing with friends, David Lee from Clifton Springs, Ontario County, and Gale Ferguson of Gouverneur, St. Lawrence County. For three days, the threesome caught 25 to 30 salmon a day.

"I thought I was going to kick the bucket and go to heaven," Gustin says.

He imagined that he'd already died and found his eternal happiness. It was heaven on earth to the man who moved from Horseheads, Chemung County, to Webster to be closer to the Lake Ontario fishery.

"I said, 'Guys, we've got to slow down, something bad's going to happen,' " Gustin recalls. "It was too easy."

Fishing with Lee can sometimes make it a breeze. He has a reputation for passing off trophy fish.

Lee had the rod that hooked Gustin's fish in his hands and said, "Here, Mike, you take it." The pair argued for about three minutes over who was going to reel in the line.

"No, you take it." "No, you." "No, I insist, YOU take it."

Finally, Ferguson, who was driving, shouted: "SOMEBODY take the rod."

Gustin did so reluctantly. The fish seemed like no biggie ("it fought like it was mid-teens" in weight, Gustin says) until it got to the end of the boat.

Then they saw it. Then Lee said: "Give me the rod back."

Too late.

It was Gustin's fish now.

"When that hit the deck (of the boat) three grown men screamed," he says.

Gustin got on the radio and called Andy Sykut's boat, Candy, to say he just weighed a 27-pounder.

Normally fish weigh in lighter on the boat than at the weigh station. All the other boats in the area heard the news.

Someone else came over the airwaves and said to another party: "Lynn, I think you just lost."

It was a friend of Cunningham's who was fishing nearby. The derby leader's grand prize seemed in jeopardy -- until Eye Guy returned to Wilson, Niagara County, to weigh his catch.

Talk about spoiling a fish.

"I have issues with lake trout," Gustin says now, perhaps only half joking.

Gustin grew up in the Southern Tier fly fishing much of the time on Catharine Creek. In 1982, he traveled to the Salmon River in Oswego County and hooked a 25-pound salmon on his seven-foot fly rod with eight-pound test line. The fish wrapped him up and broke his pole.

"I said to myself, 'I'm never fishing back home again,' " Gustin says.

Three years later, he was on a boat on the lake fishing in the ESLO Derby.

The Lake Ontario fishing boom of the late 1980s lured his family closer to this great fishing hole. But don't try telling him about the good, old days.

"I think the fishery today is as good as it was back in the late '80s," Gustin says. "It's awesome. There isn't a day that goes by when you don't catch your limit."

Gustin intends to get out eight or nine times during the 18-day Fall Derby, which begins Friday. Repeat winners are rare so he knows the odds are stacked against him. He does have a few rules to follow, however.

No. 1 is to fish with Lee. Though Gustin says Lee is a "rod hog" most of the year, he gets unselfish at tournament time. He has passed off two Derby winners and a runner-up over the years.

No. 2 is "even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once." In other words, throw out the rules along with the small fish. Sykut, also of Webster, did teach him "if you're catching small fish, you've got to pick up and run. Fish school in the same size." If the fish you're catching aren't leaderboard quality, move to another spot.

Maybe you'll hit bigger fish elsewhere. Maybe they'll even be bigger than a lake trout.

Gustin shudders at the thought.

There was a time, he says, when things were slow he would go out for lakers.

"Not this year," Gustin says. "I'll never fish for lakers again."

Except in his dreams.