Owasco Lake 11/13 AM
The plan was to meet Greg at Otisco Lake at 8 am for a shot at some bass and maybe a Tiger Musky or two. Unfortunately the water level here is still ridiculously low. It’d be nice if the launches were modified at OLM to accomodate the low water but that hasn’t happened yet. Anyways we decided against chancing the precipice off of the end of the ramp and headed over to Owasco Lake instead.
Water temps are around 49/51 here and it was my first trip out with my old boat (which has upgrades including a brand new floor/carpet/dials-gauges and more.) Everything worked very well today. Greg had some very good “fishing” but not great “landing” or hookups today. In short order he hooked a very nice smallmouth bass in the 18″+ range that got off. Then he hooked a nice northern pike around 30″ that got off about 6″ away from the net. Then he had follows from a few bigger bass that didn’t hit. He then had a very solid (mid-30s” range) pike hit or go after his lure 3X and didn’t hook up. A few more pike did the same thing. So a lot of fishy encounters but just a few perch (up to over 13″) and a nice 29″+ northern to show on the day. It was fun but slightly frustrating for both of us. We kept shaking our heads though at how nice the weather was! It can be a crapshoot booking a trip in mid-November weather-wise.
But overall, given what we saw combined with the bluebird conditions and light west winds, I’d have to rate the fishing as very good in general. I’ll be back here later this week for sure. Fly-Fishing would have been productive today for pike – there’s no doubt in my mind about it.