Canandaigua Lake 7/2
It was great getting out on Canandaigua today. At 6:45 am the first boat of the day was launching at the N. end State Launch. The winds were blowing pretty good out of the south, which can make for tricky boat control on this beautiful lake. For those of you who’ve never been on Canandaigua Lake – it’s gorgeous. Lush, forested hills – higher than those on Skaneateles Lake! It’s basically “Skaneateles West” size and appearance wise, but there’s much more development on it and the fish community includes alewives and smelt and no landlocked salmon. The water quality is very high and the lakefront residents own some of the highest priced lake front anywhere. Danny Wegman’s house is on this lake! The boat traffic gets ridiculous here in the summer due to the lake’s proximity to Rochester and surrounding populated areas.
Had I known my laker bite would peter out by 9:00 am, I’d have gone right to my best laker areas, but I hit some other areas first. I nailed 4 nice lakers and lost probably another 4 to 6. Most fish were 17″ to 20″, but my best was a 27+1/2″ 7lb. 6oz beauty. There are no lampreys in this lake. That, combined with the super high-water quality make these fish some of the best eating lakers in the region. I kept after the lakers well after they quit biting and had nothing to show but a couple missed hits/fish for the next 3 hours.
I tried working some Super Flukes for smallmouth bass and had 4 nice bass chase my flukes in, but they didn’t gobble them. I didn’t have time to try much else as I had an appointment in town at 3:30. I did do some dropshotting in order to test out my brand new Fenwick Elite Tech Dropshot Rod. A couple nice rockbass and sunfish quickly grabbed my dropshot worm. The rod is fantastic and I can’t wait to hit some good smallies on it.
When I got back to the launch at 2:30 pm the north end of the lake was the zoo I’d expected earlier. The lake was churning due to all the boat wakes. A good number of jet skis were out as well (well behaved ones.) But that’s to be expected during a holiday week.