Reports 5/17 – 5/20
I’ve had a hectic couple weeks with some personal issues and I just noticed I mixed up some names on my recent reports – my apologies there. I’ve since corrected them. Here’s how we did over the past 4 days:
5/17 Cayuga Lake out of Dean’s: Did a 2 boat tag-along trip with Roy’s crew. I had Aaron, Eric and TJ on my boat for some laker jigging. A good time was had by all and around a dozen nice lakers were landed. We had a nice silvery fish (rainbow, brown or salmon) lost near the boat and some chases from some brown trout. Good AM bite, then a lull, then a good PM bite.
5/18 AM Seneca Lake out of Sampson: Guided Brian and Cassie for 1/2 day for pike and lakers. Conditions were sunny and windy out of the south to start. Tried a couple areas around Sampson (both shores) for pike and didn’t raise any. 4 mega-perch attacked our X-Raps. More were around. A bass or two also came for our lures. But a 1/2 day doesn’t give us a lot of time for two different patterns. Motored towards Belhurst and Brian landed a couple solid wild lakers. Good day that would’ve been even better had the pike made a showing.
PM: Guided the Hermans for their first outing of the year. Laker action was slow with Eleonore landing a 16″er off of Sampson. We marked fish but they weren’t hitting well. Conditions were calm and drifting very tough. Wind picked up out of the north and I suggested pike. We tried two areas I didn’t have time to hit in the AM. Five casts or so into our first area and Eleonore landed a 35″ beauty on a Deep Husky Jerk. We released her. John nailed a solid 24″ pickerel and we had a few other pike encounters. Not bad. Saw gulls around and some tremendous alewife schools. Fun trip, but somewhat slow fishing.
5/19 Cayuga Lake out of Long Point: Guided Rick and Gary who have joined me several times over the past few years. We went after lakers. The fishing was pretty good with Gary having the hot hand for some reason. The guys landed at least 8 solid fish. Lots of trollers were out (I think Barney’s derby was going on.) We overheard talk of a nice 8 to 9lb rainbow being caught. Our fishing was OK in the AM (we started at 6:30) then picked up around mid morning. By noon it was slow.
5/20: Skaneateles Lake – Guided Kevin and Carl in the AM. Kevin had never really fished before so it was a teaching day. I showed him a few favorite techniques for Finger Lakes smallmouth bass – namely working tube jigs and superflukes. He caught his first fish – a rockbass before long. He then managed a couple smallmouths. Carl caught some rockbass and smallmouths as well. We caught a handful of fish – action wasn’t great, primarily due to the lack of wind.
PM: Guided Sharon and her boyfriend Cardon, who both gave a supreme effort on a very tough afternoon. A glass calm, super clear Skaneateles Lake is not easy to fish. We motored all over the lake and tried a lot of areas. We finally wound up with a couple pickerel (one dink and one good one,) some bass (mostly 10″ers,) some good perch and a lake trout (in 62 degree water that was about 8′ deep – I think I’ve seen it all now.) The bass fishing in the AM wasn’t a cakewalk, but the PM fishing made AM look easy!