Reports

Guided Mark I. with his wife Jane today for a 1/2 day trip starting out around 8:15 am.  Mark loves to fish, but Jane is a much more casual angler, so we’ve been doing some half-days as opposed to the usual full-days Mark tends to book.  Today was a gorgeous, perfect day out on the water, and even a non-angler would have appreciated it!  Fishing was good today, not great – but not bad at all.  It’s the time of year when it often pays off to be fishing around mid-morning through mid-afternoon.  The sun is getting lower in the sky and usually isn’t as intense-feeling as it is in late-June or July – or even August for that matter.  The water remains clear in the mid-to-lower lake sections.  There are no signs of algae.  There are some weedmats, and waterfleas are also around, but they aren’t very dense.

Last time we were out, Mark had all the action, although Jane lost a fish.  Both Mark and Jane shined today with 7 fish landed total, and the catch was fairly evenly distributed.  A fair number of other fish were lost and had a little more “hook-up luck” been on our side, we easily could’ve had a double-digit day.  Colors varied – we caught fish on just about everything we tried:  Black, White, White/Chartreuse tail and what I call the “space alien jig” – typically a chartreuse head with a white jig or a white head with a limetreuse head.  It certainly doesn’t resemble anything a fish might encounter in the wild, but Mark’s top fish – a hard fighting 28″ wild lake trout wanted to cream that thing!

Best depths were 90′ to 120′ today.  We exclusively fished mid-lake areas today.  We saw another two boats out fishing – that was it.  Boat traffic is very light on the lakes with school in session in NY State now.

My availability remains good for September.  Next week is open as is the 15th (Sunday), the 17th – 20th, the 25th, the 28th and the 30th.  I can also switch a date around if you don’t see the one you want.

We shall see what the weather does in September.  We’re looking at a good cold-snap this weekend with rain.  If we get a good amount of cold rain, it will do wonders to cool down the surface temps of these lakes and hopefully move us ahead into some early-fall patterns for fish like northern pike.  If we don’t get much rain over the weekend, and we head back towards highs around the upper-70s or 80 and lows in the 50s, it will continue to move lake trout deeper in all likelihood.  I love September and October as well as early November for smallmouth bass fishing on Skaneateles Lake.  I will also be on Keuka Lake soon.