Owasco Lake 6/2
Guided the full day with Bob and his brother Bill. Bill joined me on Owasco Lake on 8/19/06 and he did very well on lakers. Today was tough. We started at 6 am and fished hard all day. We found laker friendly water temps from around 65′ on out (though we even tried shallower.) Good numbers of fish remain in the deep water basin – more or less roaming around suspended. We worked a lot of “hooks” and had virtually no reaction from the lakers. One or two chasers on the day. We had zero fish coming off the bottom in the depths. We worked downlake and Bill eventually nailed a 21″ laker on a tube jig in around 75′ of water off a point. The guys weren’t up for pike or bass fishing, which would have been a better option (what could have been worse?) so we lived and died by the laker jigging. I had no problems with that and thought we could do better. But the guys fished well, doing stuff competently.
For Lake Trout jigging, this past May has been the toughest one since I started guiding in 2005. Luckily we still haven’t gotten skunked yet, but we’ve had to work extremely hard for everything. Fish aren’t coming easy, though there have been some hot moments. The lack of a good warming trend has kept baitfish scattered. Lakers just aren’t putting on the feedbag very heavily. Bass and pike fishing is a better option, though Seneca pike have also been “off.” Early bass fishing has been excellent. But we enjoy the challenge of the lakers – so we keep doing it. And tough fishing hopefully makes us better fishermen. Water temps are much cooler than usual for this time of year. Let’s hope June heats up a bit!