Reports and Info Sept. 10th – 18th
Welcome to the new Fingerlakes Angling Zone website! I am just starting to learn how to navigate it. First of all, my contact form had a few bugs in it and I wasn’t able to reply to any messages directly unless I had the person’s email address. So if you were looking for a trip and I didn’t get back to you, please email me again (Matthew D. – please email me! I penciled in your date. Thanks!) I have a lot of work to do and will be replacing some of the stock photos with some new ones on the lakes.
This Sunday remains open for trips. Other open dates in October include the 11th – 16th, 18th – 20th and 25th – 27th along with the 30th and 31st.
9/10 Keuka Lake: Fished with my buddy Terry out of Penn Yan. We targeted bass. My buddy Mike has been using a lot of swim baits over the past few years for bass and I wanted to get some practice with them, so that was what I focused on. He gave me some good tips on rigging and approaches. After nailing a nice smallmouth in short order, Terry also got on the program. We had some very good fishing for smallmouths and a few largemouths along with bonus pickerel and rockbass. We landed over 16 bass up to 21″ long. We worked water primarily from 10′ to 20′ deep. Some fish came on tubes and dropshots as well.
9/12 Cayuga Lake out of Myers: Guided a full day with Mark I. and his friend Dave for lakers. We had some topnotch laker fishing with a lot of large fish. Winds were heavy and Dave was getting a little woozy, so we moved to a quieter area. We caught more fish there but the size wasn’t as good. Around 14 or 15 solid lakers were landed on the day in water up to 130′ deep.
9/13 Cayuga Lake out of Myers: Guided a full day with Kevin and his friend Andrew (a different Drew!) Things got off to great start with over a dozen big (again) lakers. Winds came up and we made a run and had a lot tougher fishing. A bonus salmon was also caught (I think it was around 14″) and we almost had a brown or two. Fun day but windy.
9/14 AM Owasco Lake out of South Shore Marine: Back out with Kevin and Drew #2 for a half day. Had strong southerlies so we went out of the south end of Owasco. We had cold water down there with the strong south winds pushing the (lighter) warmer water up north. Started with pike action and Drew nabbed a 25″ northern on a stickbait. That was it for the pike in the first hour. Bass were fairly active in one area and Kevin nailed a couple on Superflukes and a swimbait. A few were missed as well. We tried a little jigging and Kevin landed a gorgeous wild rainbow that was 23″. We released it unharmed. This lake should be offering some great brown and rainbow trout fishing over the foreseeable future.
9/15 Seneca Lake out of Sampson: Guided Drew (another Drew entirely) and his in-law Dan and Frank. It was blowing good out of the south when we launched at Sampson. I made the whitewater run across the lake and we marked some lakers – most of which were likely small. Drew missed a few then caught a 17″er. We tried further north when the winds subsided and didn’t see much. We marked a few further south. I’d imagine a lot of Seneca’s lakers are migrating towards spawning areas now at Valois and that area. It was a full day trip and the original reason for fishing Seneca (which I’m not generally guiding for lakers yet this year) was for the guys who were renting a place on the lake to be able to familiarize themselves with areas. They had truck issues so weren’t going to be able to hit the lake, so we hopped over to Cayuga out of Taughannock. Two hours there was better than we did all AM at Seneca. Five solid lakers were landed before we called it a day.
9/18 PM Cayuga Lake out of Dean’s Cove: Launched at 1:15 PM. Originally we were going to go for pike on Seneca but I didn’t like the conditions, so Dean’s gave us a shot for lakers and pickerel/bass. Friends have done very well out here for lakers lately – including this AM (they were coming in after a great AM) but the bite had slowed. We gave it a shot and had a few small salmon following. We ran north and Cory and his wife Tara were able to get into some good to excellent pickerel action. We wound up back on the lakers for the “last call” and Tara caught her first and Cory dropped one. Fun day and gorgeous weather out there.