Skaneateles Lake 7/12 AM + Owasco Lake 7/13
This just seems to be one of those years when the DEC Region 7 Finger Lakes are fishing much better than the Region 8 lakes. I’d love to see all the lakes fishing well, but I live closer to the eastern lakes so if we can only have one hot region, I’ll take the Region 7 lakes!
Region 8 fisheries will be doing their lake trout assessment on Keuka Lake shortly. We’ll finally see exactly what’s going on with the baitfish over there. Anglers did report seeing some alewife spawning activity on Keuka Lake but clearly there aren’t many around. Guide Jon Evans has had some great bass fishing over there this season and the laker bite has been good despite the lack of bait, so I’d say Keuka is fishing well.
Here’s how our fishing went over the past two days:
7/12 AM on Skaneateles Lake: Guided Martin for a 1/2 day. He’s staying on the lake with family this week and wanted to learn some techniques for smallmouth bass. We had fun fishing even though the “catching” wasn’t much to write home about. Fishing flukes brought numerous chases from smallmouth bass in the “dink range” up to around 15″. A few bass were landed. We saw one giant below the fluke late in the AM. A fish or two was also caught dropshotting and on tube jigs. We did a little laker jigging and a couple hits were had.
7/13 Owasco Lake: Guided Scott and his dad Dick for the full day with Dick just fishing a half day before we dropped him off. We started with lake trout and the fishing was excellent. I was very impressed by the numbers of fish I marked and the loads of baitfish. Funny how everything bounces back when the lake isn’t being overstocked with lakers and walleyes. Suddenly the so called phosphorus issues just disappear. The lakers were mostly fish in the 23″ to 26″ range. No real giants but not a single dink either. In less than 4 hours the guys landed around a dozen solids.
Scott did some bass fishing afterwards and caught 4 smallmouths. He had some hits from some very nice bass but they didn’t hook up. It’s hard to do two things in a day. It’s possible the bass bite was better when the lakers were hitting. Who knows? But it was a great day on the water.