Otisco Lake 9/6 AM
Guided Tony and Christina again for a 1/2 day in the morning. We started at 6:30 am and motored north in search of Tiger Muskies. Tony had caught a few before in Pennsylvania incidentally, while targeting bass. I was hoping for a good bite today with the cold nights we’d just experienced. We had a little wind to start and fog was rolling off the lake after the 41 degree night. Surface temps were 71 degrees.
Fishing was slow today. Christina managed to hook what appeared to be a decent fish on a hollow bodied swimbait. It got off after a few seconds, but hit close to the boat, which is a Tiger Musky/Esocid trait, though we never did identify the fish. About an hour later a halfway decent largemouth bass hit her jerkbait. Tony threw spinnerbaits, plastics, inline spinners and some plugs. He was casting my Revo Toro Winch like a champ! He had a quick pop on a spinnerbait, but nothing solid. Eventually on the lake’s west side a Tiger chased in his Super Shad Rap, but never gobbled it. Fish appeared negative today. Likely due to the front. I’m not sure. A lot of Tigers probably also suspend around baitfish out over deeper water in the mid-summer as well. But quite a few usually can be found shallow and we did see a couple surface.
It’s hard figuring out what to do when we have two 1/2 days and want to target two different species on different lakes and one day looks to be the best. Yesterday was probably the good day to fish, no matter what we went for and today – the 2nd day after the front, was likely going to be the tougher day whether we targeted lake trout or bass. I’ll give Otisco Lake a couple weeks to hopefully cool down and get some muskies a bit more active and some baitfish back in shallow. Either way, it was good time and a beautiful day to be out. Very few boats were on the lake.