Report 6/3 – 6/5
Fishing has been off and on lately throughout the region. I like to blame the weather. Lake temps in the large Finger Lakes remain cold; it may be hitting the upper 50s on top, but cold water isn’t far below the surface. Trout can show up anywhere!
Skaneateles Lake 6/3: Guided Robert for the full day starting around 8 am. He lives in largemouth and spotted bass country and was hoping for some smallies. Water temps were in the mid-50s if I remember right. The north end of the lake was loaded with rockbass. He caught plenty of those on tube jigs as well as a small smallmouth. I’d assume many smallies are starting to spawn. I don’t generally target those, so we checked colder water areas for pre-spawn bass.
A move down the lake still resulted in slow bass fishing. The sun came out and winds moderated and we found a decent concentration of smallmouths willing to gobble Superflukes. The fishing was a lot of fun and he nailed 1/2 dozen decent bass and had another 10 to 20 showing interest and hitting the flukes but not getting hooked. A few large perch also made things fun. He didn’t work many jigs in deep water for long. Had we done that, I felt some lakers and perhaps a rainbow or two would’ve made it to the net. I did spot a nice salmon or rainbow in around 10′ of water, so they are still inshore – at least some of them. Fun day.
Seneca/Geneva 6/4: Guided Ron, Bill #1 and Bill #2 for a half day. Laker fishing was very hot out of Geneva yesterday. In a nutshell, fish were shallow – around 50′ to 65′ was excellent and 10 solid fish up to around 32″ and 12lbs made it to the net. Bill #2 had the hot hand, with Bill #1 getting things started and Ron holding his own. We released the two biggest fish – a 28″ and the 32″. Smaller ones were kept for the table. Great fishing! BTW – lamprey wounding was very low.
Seneca/Geneva 6/5: Did a full day with John, Jack and Brian. Wow – what a difference a day makes! (Great song, btw.) In short order Jack landed a laker around 20″ shallow. Then it was zippo for a long time. We worked shallow, deep and in-between. Lake temps had dropped a bit with laker-friendly 48 degree water down 10′, so lakers may have been in super shallow water for all we know. Only one other fish was landed – a nicer one around 24″ if I remember correctly. That one was in 160′ FOW on bottom. A run to Sampson didn’t help. Sticky sort of bite with fish quite negative. My friend Mike reported similar tough fishing on Oneida Lake compared to earlier in the week and I also had a tough report on Cayuga from Angling Zone friend Dave. So it was definitely a weather-thing. We had a fun day and it was beautiful out. The guys learned the technique and had it down pretty well by day’s end.