Keuka Lake out of Branchport 4/23
Fished hard today with my buddy Jarrod. We started around 8 am targeting lakers. There are loads of fish out from 75′ to 180′. Most were from 130′ or so out to 180′. We had some grabs and decent hookups to start, but given the number of fish we were marking the “catching” was only fair. We landed 5 keepers and missed and lost lots more. We divided the day between laker jigging and casting for bass.
We saw some interesting stuff. DEC diaries report very few salmonids apart from lakers. But we saw a large silvery fish gobbling freshly stocked landlocked salmon at the boat launch! A 20″ brown followed in Jarrod’s stickbait too. So trout and salmon are around.
Bass fishing was good. I landed a nice 4lb+ largie and Jarrod landed five or six 14 to 16″ largemouths. We saw some big perch cruising around and plenty of huge carp. Large pickerel and 3 to 4 pike chased our lures as we bass fished. I was impressed with the sizes of the pickerel. Last year I caught a lot of small ones – it’s nice to see 23″ to 25″ pickerel around.
Keuka’s always a good bet when forecasts call for windy conditions out of the west – which is what we had today. We made the call last night. Keuka’s high surrounding hills keep conditions fairly calm there – even with stiff west winds. Strong southerlies can be a different story! H20 hit 41 to 42 today. We did a little crappie fishing w/o luck. Jarrod may have had one follow.