Onondaga Lake 7/11
Got out for a full day’s worth of bass fishing with my buddy Terry. Bass fishing is still pretty good here but was slower for us than it was back in June. We are still figuring out the fishing rhythms of this lake. We fished from around 10:30 to 6 pm. Road construction in Syracuse and along the Thruway from Rochester (where Terry lives) delayed our start time a bit.
I had a good start but it was all Terry for the latter part of the day. We wound up landing 11 legal bass including Terry’s two smallmouths, one of which was an 18″er. Water temps are over 80 degrees. We had action on Superflukes, Senkos, Spinnerbaits, Crankbaits and Drop-Shot rigs. Fish are moving into summer patterns. In June they seemed post-spawn for the most part.
No other species were hooked today. No sign of any Tiger Muskies or concentrations of gar (though we didn’t spend any time around the gar area – during past trips we’ve encountered gar in different parts of the lake.) I’m not sure what the rough percentage of gar are that stay in the lake versus ones that spend most of their time in the river is. I saw a drum or two and the usual carp. A couple nice sized dead walleyes were floating around. We may get back here late this summer or in the fall, but we’ll likely be shifting to smallmouths (and hopefully some salmonids) up around Lake Ontario and perhaps some largemouths on Cayuga. I wouldn’t mind hitting smallmouths on Owasco and Skaneateles or even fishing Cross Lake (in search of bass and large gar) later this summer. We’ll see.