Owasco Lake 9/7 AM
Guided Dave and Tom here for 1/2 day starting around 6:45 am. They had a wedding to get to, so Keuka wouldn’t have been a good call with the extra drive-time and race activities at Watkins Glen this weekend, so we went with Owasco Lake. I was psyched to give it a go, since it had been over a year if my memory serves me correctly.
Conditions were cloudy and choppy to start due to the cold night “land” air mixing with the warm lake air – resulting in some good wind out of the south. Loads of baitfish were on the north end from 50′ on out. The bite was slow to start. Eventually Dave had a hit or two and as the sun came out and winds calmed (there is a pattern there…,) he hooked and landed a good fish. The 25″+ laker looked plump and had nice coloration. Tom nabbed one around 20″. Then he lost a fish that was head shaking vigorously – we’re not sure what it was. That was about it. We tried a lot of areas north of Long Point. I didn’t mark a lot of lakers. With the cutbacks in stocking, my guess is that the laker population is low and hopefully more in balance with the forage. We did see some trollers unhook a couple undersized fish – likely rainbows or sublegal lakers.
Got our fish from 70′ to 80′ today. Thermocline ran from 55′ to 70′ or so. A fair number of fish were out suspended over deep water. I would’ve liked to have stayed and fished later, since the conditions were improving, but fatigue got the best of me and I have a busy week ahead, so it’ll have to wait. Overall my impression is that this lake is on the rebound in terms of fishery balance, but it’s not there yet.