Oak Orchard Creek/Lake Ontario 8/27
Guided Mark I. for what wound up being an abbreviated full day trip. He enjoys targeting gar on the fly and we’ve done a trip a year or so on Sodus Bay over the last 3 or 4 years. I wanted him to experience the gar action “At the Oak” so that’s where we went today. It’s a haul for me – about 135 miles and a good 2.5 to 3 hours. I prefer July and early August for gar action, but this year’s above normal hot temperatures appear to have kept the gar active so we took the chance with trout/salmon and perhaps bass as a backup plan.
The weather forecast called for clouds with a chance of showers before 5 pm and showers and T-storms after 5. We wound up with rain starting around 11 am and it got very, very heavy by 3 pm with driving downpours (mostly after we left at 4 pm.) The gar were around and a couple smaller ones cooperated. The fish were kind of neutral today and never really kicked into high gear. There are thousands of alewives running up and down the lower Oak now. Just schools of bait and the gar are blasting it.
I did a little scouting on the lake before our trip and found what appeared to be salmonids on the break between around 35′ to 65′ FOW. Also some lakers out on bottom around 140′. I had Mark jig the shallows a bit but apart from a few fish moving both towards and away from the jigs, we had no luck. We weren’t out long though, before the weather forced us off and I was encouraged by what I saw. Captains reported so-so fishing today. The King action off the Oak appears to have slowed. Funny how the Kings are so shallow off the Oak and by Oswego most Charters were still working 150′ to 300′ FOW last week.