Owasco Lake 10/7, 8 + 10
Fishing ran the gamut on Owasco Lake this past weekend in terms of lake trout action. Saturday was outstanding, Sunday was tougher and Tuesday (today) was very solid. Next to nobody has been out on the lake, which made it nice.
10/7: Did a PM 6 hour trip here with Ron and his son Matt, both of whom have been doing trips with me since 2008. I hadn’t been out on Owasco fishing lakers in a while and I brought gear for bass and pike too. In a nutshell, we checked out the north end for lakers and never looked back. Ron landed a nice lake trout on his first drop with the jig and the fishing stayed superb and steady right until we quit around 6 pm. Ron and Matt landed a total of 43 lake trout!!! Just outrageous fishing. These aren’t the overstocked skinny fish from this lake that we saw around 2005; these were nice fish from various classes running from 16″ to 29″ long. They were gorging on young of year alewives, which were heavily schooled up on the lake’s flats.
10/8 AM: After yesterday’s action, it would have been silly to go anywhere else, so we started right where we left off. The only problem (and main difference) was the howling wind out of the south west, gusting to around 18 mph! Fishing was tougher and the guys only managed 4 lake trout total on the half day if I remember right. We did an hour of bass fishing and Ron landed a pike around 25″ and both Ron and Matt missed/lost some nice bass. Still a pretty decent half day but nothing like yesterday.
PM Trip: Guided Todd for the afternoon starting just after noon. He wanted to learn the jigging technique so we fished some different areas. Fishing was better than the AM (as the sun got up and the winds gradually diminished.) He managed to land around 5 fish if I remember right. The fish hit pretty well just before we called it a day around 4:30 pm. By then the wind had died down almost completely.
10/10: Guided Matt and his wife (just married on Saturday) Rachel for a full day starting around 7:30 am. Fishing was very good throughout the day today, peaking by the afternoon. They landed 14 solid lakers up to 30″ long. Rachel hadn’t done the technique before and dropped a half dozen to a dozen fish. Matt had been out with Greg earlier this year in June and hammered the lakers out of Long Point on Cayuga, so he knew the deal. Gorgeous day with very few boats out and some solid fishing.