Owasco Lake/Seneca Lake 6/5 + 6/6
Got out for a couple days with Terry. We checked out Owasco and Seneca Lakes. Over the next few weeks I hope to get over to some lakes I haven’t fished in a while like Onondaga or perhaps back up to Sodus or Irondequoit Bay. We’ll see.
Owasco Lake 6/5: The weather forecast looked good for some pike fishing as well as laker action so I met Terry at Emerson Park at 11 am. We had rain and light north winds to start. Some nice smallmouths were spawning or at least close to spawning in the outlet. I landed a few nice healthy, plump lakers on the lakes north end – four in fairly short order. Some fish were up high in the water column – likely rainbows or browns.
Conditions weren’t great for pike so we tried working some bass stuff. Terry had a few very nice smallmouths get close to grabbing his fluke. I caught a handful of rockbass on tube jigs. We worked some areas for pike as conditions improved and caught 5 fish. All were in the 21″ to 25″ range. Terry lost a bigger one. Lake temps are in the upper 50s and we should still see some good pike and bass action over the next few weeks. Weeds haven’t even come up yet much at all. Laker action looks pretty solid. We talked to a guy who’d been trolling on the north end and he caught and released a brown trout that he’d estimated at 15lbs! We saw photos and it was a solid fish. He also trolled up a few lakers.
Seneca Lake 6/6: I was thinking Skaneateles Lake today but the parking situation is a bit weird over there now with “pay to park” at Mandana and no non-boating parking at the State Launch. I didn’t want Terry to get a ticket. Weather for what I wanted to do at Skinny was iffy too. Anyways, I’m not sure how much the State Launch parking is being enforced on rainy weekdays but we went with Seneca out of Sampson instead. Pike fishing wasn’t really worth it, given the calm conditions we faced for most of the day. We gave it maybe 2 hours without any action. I was excited to check on the laker action. I missed a good hit shallow near Belhurst. I also landed one wild laker at 17″. Terry had some good chases. We marked a fair number of fish and a lot of bait. I think trout jigging here will be respectable once the thermocline sets up. For now, they are around but pretty scattered. Water temp on top was 52 out of Sampson and a little warmer up north. We saw a lot of post-spawn perch around along with pike too that were inactive.