Otisco Lake/Cross Lake Fri. June 24

Reports

We started on Otisco Lake at around 2:30 am looking for walleyes and/or muskies. Alewives were in around the marina launch and up along the stone wall on the south east shore. We worked these areas plus the north end flats and causeway hard for walleyes without a single hit. Weeds were up pretty high and I feel we would have been much better off hitting this lake two or three weeks ago. One boat came in as we were leaving and they didn’t have any action either. I heard a report from the marina owners of an 11lb. walleye taken from shore a week ago. The conditions were excellent and I would have expected fish – bottom line is I believe the walleye bite has slowed a bit. I think fishermen should concentrate around the marina area for nighttime eyes. We saw the most bait there and some swirls from gamefish. We fished hard until noon for tiger muskies and never hooked or saw one. We caught a few bass. H2O was in the upper 60s at the south end and low 70s up north (and south later in the day).

Despite our lack of sleep we knew we were close to Cross Lake so we headed up there checking things out. We were hoping to find some gar. No sign of them either! We slowly motored around most of the lake looking for breaking gar. Never saw one, though I’ve heard a few were around. We marked some bait and white perch. Caught a white perch on a blade bait but that was about it. Checked out the river for gar and didn’t see them there either. I won’t check this lake out again until late July given how good the gar action has been at Sodus Bay. Water temps were mid-70s and water level was average.