Columbus Weekend Reports 10/8 – 10/12
10/8 Keuka Lake out of Branchport AM: Guided Ed and John (who’ve joined me 4 or 5 times over the past couple years) for some lakers. We started around 8 am and ran over to the Bluff. Fishing was very good, with the guys landing their limits in fairly short order. We marked plenty of fish and the guys had plenty of hits. As always, it was a fun trip!
10/8 PM Trip: Guided the Hermans and their friend Ann. The hot AM bite subsided, and the wind came up, making for tough fishing at the Bluff. We wound up back in the Branchport Arm and during the evening the fishing picked up a little, with 3 nice fish landed. Lots of fish were around, they just weren’t hitting what we were using!
10/9 Keuka Repeat: Went back out with the Hermans and Ann. Getting out earlier paid off – and if lakers aren’t hitting well on one day, you can usually assume the bite will pick up on the next day! And it did. Redemption was had by all involved and around 14 nice lakers were landed. An hour or two of dropshotting produced 2 smallies in around 40′ of water!
10/10 Keuka out of Branchport: Due to an unfortunate mix-up I never met up with my clients for a scheduled full day today. It doesn’t happen often at all – maybe once or twice in my guiding career, but sometimes folks show up at the wrong launch and are out of cellphone range and aren’t able to communicate with me. Oh well. So I arrived at the launch around 8:20 am and waited for 2 hours or so before going fishing.
I worked some areas for bass I hadn’t fished in a while. The largemouths were hitting and I landed 3 on Superflukes and alewife tubes. They were in less than 12′ of water. My buddy Jarred called and unbelievably, since he got his “real job” we haven’t fished together all year. So I was psyched to see him and spend the PM fishing with him. I picked him up at the dock at 2 pm and we went bass fishing. He always tries different stuff and had some modified lures to work. I cast Superflukes, a deep X-Rap and an alewife tube. He got things started with a couple rock bass and just as we were getting ready to head to the Bluff to jig lakers he nailed a decent 15″ smallmouth on a perch colored Rapala type jerkbait. We kept fishing and a large smallie hammered my bait – after a superstrong wild battle Jarred netted the 20″ beauty and we took a few photos and released it. Then I nailed another around 20″! Just incredible fish. They were on shelves in around 15′ to 20′ of water. We had a few small pickerel follow, then headed to the Bluff. Fishing was slow to start then Jarred did a great job on lakers nailing a few as I started putting away my fishing gear. We landed 4 and kept 3 and next thing we knew it was dark out. Long, but productive day.
10/11 Keuka Lake again!: Met my old school mate Chris and his son Brian at the launch at8 am. Me and Chris go way back to3rd grade. Brian loves to fish and is a talented young angler (14 y.o.) His stomping grounds are the same as mine used to be – Irondequoit Creek and Allen’s Creek in Penfield. We headed out for lakers at the Bluff. There was a burst of some good fishing in the AM, but the guys were a little rusty and missed quite a few. We fished hard and things got tougher with heavy cloud cover moving in. Eventually around 5 or 6 fish were landed. Drop shotting produced a 14″ largemouth down around 45′! Brian had never caught a pickerel so I took him to a couple areas with an X-rap. He nailed his first pickerel, a big perch and another largemouth. We tried some other areas and tactics and called it a day. After a quick cloudburst we saw a double rainbow going across the lake with a backdrop of peak fall foliage! AMAZING!!! The stuff you see fishing can be unforgettable!
10/12 Skaneateles Lake: Met up with Gordon, who’s joined me for some good trips over the years. We knew it was early for “predictable rainbows” but we set up for them anyways with Gordon working his fly-rod. A big perch and nice bass were all that we raised. I set him up with my two favorite Skinny bass presentations – a green pumpkin tube and dropshot rig. The tube produced another big (14 1/2″) perch and a couple bass, but it was slow fishing. We worked some deep water with a dropshot without much luck. A couple changes in location paid off and we hit into a good concentration of 12″ to 15″ bass with a couple bigger ones (lost) mixed in. He landed at least a dozen or more bass and plenty of nice rockbass too. Perch came from 15′ of water, rockies and smallies from around 30′ to 40′. Water temps on both laker (Keuka and Skinny) are around 62.