Lake Ontario out of Oswego 4/11
Met my buddy Terry up at Wright’s Landing at 10:45 am. Launching is available but the facilities aren’t open yet – so no payment required but also no bathrooms/cleaning station/ice available. I don’t mind that trade-off. Around 4 to 5 boats had launched out of there and they were mainly trolling around the harbor area for browns. Only two charter boats were in slips at the marina thus far. I didn’t run across any definite charters out trolling.
It was pretty darn cold outside. At times we got pelted by a little freezing rain or snow pellets. Surface temps on the lake were around 38/39, though we had 42/43 in the harbor and in a few areas elsewhere. We worked a bunch of different shoreline areas and the harbor by casting stickbaits, bladebaits, spoons and jigs. A lot of spring brown trout fishing is a troller’s game with large areas of downright muddy, dingy gray and fishy green water. Terry had a couple follows in one area we worked on a silver bladebait. We tried a bunch of nice windblown shores. Finally I connected with a chunky 18″ to 19″ brown on a Flat-Rap. We worked a few more areas and finally started getting some hits and follows. My next fish hit hard and fought great – it was a 27″ brown. Then I nabbed a jumping 17″er that I thought was a coho from the fight, but was just an acrobatic brown. By the end of the day, nobody but us was on the lake. That’s been a rare occasion for us at Oswego, but I’ll take it! Fun day but we also got lucky.