Cayuga Lake 10/2 AM + Otisco Lake 10/3 AM
Cayuga Lake out of Union Springs 10/2 AM: Guided Mildred and Larry for our 2nd trip of the week before they head back home. After our tough pike fishing on Tuesday, I thought whacking some pickerel might provide some satisfaction. We started at around 7:20 am. The morning pickerel bite was good. Mildred even dropped what appeared to be an average sized largemouth bass. All in all, around 7 or 8 pickerel were landed and the usual others missed/dropped. I experimented with various lure combinations for the pickerel and we had some success. A few bass boats and some perch fishermen were also out. Water temps actually got warmer and were around 67 degrees.
Otisco Lake 10/3 AM: Guided Adam and his dad Mike for a 1/2 day AM starting around 7:15. Mike is really into bass fishing and we looked at the heavy wind forecasts (out of the south) and made the call to do Otisco Lake. I’ve never really guided the lake for bass per se, but I know the lake pretty well and felt that it offered up our best shot at a decent day given the wind forecast for southerlies gusting to 30 mph.
Fishing started out alright drifting the north end flats. A few bass were picked up on spinnerbaits and a Rat-L Trap. Adam lost a nice one by the boat. We also worked some milfoil edges and shoreline stuff with a Chatterbait and Senkos and picked up some more fish. It seemed like everytime Mike caught one, they’d get bigger. We didn’t land a ton of fish, but at least 6 or 7 up to 17″. They came from all over the lake. I couldn’t handle not trying a little bit for Tiger Muskies and had the guys work a high percentage area for a bit. Adam lost a good one around 36″. Then we had a follow from one around 30″. Mike finally hooked and landed a smaller on around 25″. These guys have caught their share of muskies having fished around Wisconsin their whole lives, so the muskies weren’t high on their priority list.
The water level was down around 6″ to 1′. Temps were in the mid-60s. We saw one bass boat on the lake today – that was it for boat traffic. Needless to say, by 10 am the winds were howling and the lake was whitecapping hard. I felt we did pretty well given our conditions.