Keuka Lake out of Penn Yan 5/16
Guided Rob and his brother Pete for the full day today. It’s the first time in probably 4 years I’ve launched out of Penn Yan. The launch was in good shape and the channel level good. The target today was smallmouth bass and things went very well. Rob’s an avid saltwater fly-fisherman now living in California. Pete lives in Ohio and does a bit of gear fishing. Both guys grew up in CNY.
Rob really wound up putting on a fly-fishing clinic today. The bass were on drop-offs in deep water and not active shallow. We had fish from 15′ to 30′ or more and Rob’s approach (a la Striper fishing) worked very well. He wound up landing 8 to 10 very solid bass, with his largest being a 4lb 3oz fish just under 20″. He lost a bigger one! His top 3 all measured over 19″! The gear fishing bite was harder for us today. A few fish came on Super Flukes – both rigged with nail weights, unweighted and fished with Scrounger Heads. Pete missed a fair number of hits. He landed a huge pickerel – a 28″ fish – the largest I’ve seen, though it was thin after the spawn. A few perch came to the boat as did a few largemouths. We tried a lot of approaches with the gear but couldn’t approach Rob’s success. Clouser minnows and deceivers fished on an integrated shooting head (similar to a RIO Outbound line) did the trick.
Water temps are around 52 to 54 degrees. Lake level was full pool – not too high. We saw one other boat on the lake all day long!