Lake Ontario out of Oswego 8/20
Got out on my own starting around 6:30 am. There were at least 30 boats out trolling today. No word on the fishing, though I saw a few fish being netted. Boats were working around 150′ out to over 300′ FOW.
My plan was to jig brown trout and then do some bass fishing. I also checked on Kings. I worked a favorite brown trout area and had some hits and “chasers” on the screen. Making a few presentation changes resulted in a hook up. A 17″+ SMALLMOUTH BASS IN OVER 100′ FOW (feet of water!) This fish wasn’t suspended. It was on the bottom and there were plenty more there too! Its eyes were blown out, gills bleeding and air bladder extended. My Fish Hawk temp probe has been on the fritz lately, so I haven’t been able to take deep water temperatures, but you can bet that on bottom in 100’fow it was probably very warm! Maybe 65 to 70 degrees. There were a lot of gobies on bottom in 100′.
I did manage to hook and land one brown around 20″ out a bit deeper. Had what was probably a brown hit me up high too. But I couldn’t find many browns with the water temps so crazy. My screen was fairly blank out over deep water, so the Kings weren’t much of an option (I’m not crazy about jigging Kings in late August anyways, but I haven’t given up on it.)
Smallmouth bass fishing was downright excellent today. In around 90 minutes I hooked a 1/2 dozen nice fish. Wound up landing 6 on the day up to a shade under 18″. These fish are FAT and in superb condition. They fight VERY HARD and I had a few give me the “smallmouth salute” – jumping high, shaking their heads and throwing my hooks! I had a 15″er nearly straighten out a jig-hook. Best depths for me were from 15′ out to 40′. Dropshotting Berkley Gulp did the trick in over 23′ FOW and casting goby colored tube jigs worked great shallower. Lots of other presentations would work, but it’s tough to beat the tubes and dropshot. It’s tempting to stay around Oswego instead of hitting the Chaumont/1000 Island Area with this great fishing around. I never saw another boat bass fishing today and the trollers were all gone by around 2 pm.