Reports

Did a half-day trip with George and his son Andrew.  The guys tend to book every year in August and usually George Jr, aka GJ also fishes.   Unfortunately he couldn’t make it today;  he’s a lot of fun to have along!  Usually we fish Cayuga Lake, but the bloom has been going there again, so we decided to go with Owasco Lake.  Owasco Lake is also very green.  Visibility ranged from around 3′ on the north end and east shore to less than 2′ on the west shore.  We had rare east winds today, that were likely blowing the algae laden surface water over to the west side.

I offered the guys Seneca Lake for a trip today (they live closer to that lake) but they wanted the lake which would give them the best shot at a rainbow. This lake, to me was the best call.  Fishing was somewhat slow, but not terrible today.  We had plenty of chases and hits, but mostly very short hits, which happens a lot during the bloom.  George led us off with a decent lake trout.  Andrew’s first fish wound up being a 23″ rainbow!  So we hit paydirt within the first hour of the trip.  The guys each had a brown (probably the same one) chase up their jigs – nipping at George’s and then staying inches away from Andrew’s!   So that was fun – it was probably a 5 or 6lb fish.  The guys have a place on Keuka Lake and don’t see browns or rainbows there much anymore, although George has been on the lake since the 1970s and caught his share when the fishery was hot for those species, as well as salmon.  By the way, they report terrific smallmouth bass fishing over there thus far this year.

A few more lakers rounded out our morning.  So not a great day, but not bad by any stretch, especially for Owasco Lake during the bloom.  Surface temps were at 76 degrees.  We had lakers from 65′ on out to over 100′.  Boating traffic is light.

I had a cancellation for tomorrow.  This week through Sunday remains open.  The next two days don’t look good but the weekend looks alright.  With cooling nighttime temperatures, we should see the blooms on both Cayuga and Owasco Lakes disappear shortly.  We can hope!

August 16th and 17th are open, as is the 24th, 26th – 29th and 31st.