Lake Ontario out of Oswego Harbor 7/18, Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 7/19 AM
Lake Ontario out of Oswego Harbor 7/18: Got out to Oswego at around 10:30 am and fished about 6 hours targeting salmonids. I purposely left the bass gear at home. I wound up hooking what was probably a decent King for a little while. It was hard to get a good hookset. I also had a fairly broad silver fish follow a jig to the surface, so that was cool. On the way in, I fished some shallower water and landed a solid 29″ lake trout that was probably over 9lbs.
Overall I had fun and it was going to be a make or break day for me out there with regards to continuing my efforts to jig Kings. I’ve caught a couple over the years and it’s a long trek as well as pricey to keep going up there. I don’t have a lot of “downtime” and I’ve been sacrificing time I could spend bass fishing or doing other things. So I will probably give the “big lake” another shot or two this year. If I lived in Rochester or Oswego, I’d be out there a few times a week trying to dial this stuff in. I enjoy figuring stuff out and I have learned a lot, especially this year in terms of fish movements and what I can and can’t do out there.
Cayuga Lake 7/19: Guided Russ for a half day of laker jigging today. I had a trip with him scheduled for yesterday but we bumped it up a day in hopes the lake would clear a bit. Friday’s rain was brutal but I figured 3 to 4 days would certainly be enough time. Unfortunately we had some rain on Monday and that may have messed things up. We had around 4′ of visibility today and fish were moving for the jigs. Russ had decent numbers of chasers but very few hits. He had 3 decent grabs but no hookups. So unfortunately we got skunked today. We tried all over the place and found decent pods of fish almost everywhere we tried, but they were fairly fickle. He gave a good effort and it was a beautiful day to be out. I just wish one or two (or more) of those fish would’ve connected. Fishing should improve markedly by the day. I expect top-notch fishing this weekend. We’ll see!