Lake Ontario out of Oswego 6/7 + Cayuga out of Taughannock 6/8
Lake Ontario/Oswego 6/7: Had a fun time, albeit with tough fishing out of Oswego. I woke up around 3 am and was on the road before 4. Make it to the launch around 5:30. This is usually a very tough time of year on Lake Ontario. The hot spring nearshore brown fishery and spring King action tapers way down and there’s no thermocline set up yet to concentrate the fish, but I wanted to see how things went with the jigging.
One other boat had launched out of Wrights Marine. Around 1/2 dozen charters appeared to be out, mostly working the area east of Oswego. I checked shallow first to see if I might be able to fly-fish shallow browns, but after seeing 60 degrees on top, and finding water around 52 on bottom in 30′ fow, I knew it wouldn’t be worth it, so after 20 minutes or so I moved deeper with my jigging gear.
Marking fish and finding bait was easy. There was a lot of bait from around 40′ to 70′ and smaller bait pods out deeper. I didn’t mark many fish at all around the bait, and working jigs through the bait only yielded one or two half-hearted chases that were unlikely to be lake trout. I found plenty of lakers out from 80′ to about 120′. All on bottom, and the bite (or lack thereof) was very similar to what I saw on Cayuga last Wednesday and Seneca Lake during the Memorial Day weekend. Fish were very much neutral to negative. I swore I had a massive silver flash below one of my jigs but I wouldn’t bet money on it. I had plenty of lakers chase me up and down, but they wouldn’t hit. At least I was able to ascertain the potential for late spring/summer lake trout fishing at Oswego! So that was well worth it. By noon nearly all the boats were gone.
There’s plenty of green slimy algae floating around and on bottom in the shallows. I tried a couple inshore areas quickly for bass but didn’t see much. Went back out for lakers and had more of the same – chases and “lookers” but nothing gobbling. I fished lakers hard for around 7 hours. In case anyone was curious, that’s what this professional guide does on his day off – go looking for new opportunities!
Fatigue finally started hitting me, so I grabbed a couple bass rods and checked out a favorite area. I’ve had some reports of good bassin’ out of Oswego over the past year and I was happy with what I found. I worked 10′ to 17′ fow and landed 4 solid smallmouths. I missed others and had 2 fish (including a 4lb+ smallie) follow in a hooked one. It wasn’t Oswego c. 1998 or 2000, but it was good fishing. I used a Goby colored tube. I felt that had I fished bass for the whole day, it would have been a very productive trip, but I was happy with what I found with the lakers. I’ll be back out here within a couple weeks (at the latest)as the thermocline starts to set up – stay tuned!
Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 6/8: Guided John and his father Doug for 1/2 day. We worked both sides of the lake up by AES and the guys did a real nice job landing 8 nice lakers and having one salmon around 15″ get off around boatside. Eels weren’t bad, though one laker had 2 attached and one other had one. 55′ to 80′ or so did the trick. The bite got better as the day went on. Best fish was around 29″. My kind of day! Good from the get-go and they kept on a bitin’.