Seneca 6/6 – 6/7, Otisco 6/8
Seneca out of Watkins 6/6:
Did a full day trip primarily for fly-fishing northern pike with Lance and Jack. I hadn’t been out of Watkins pikin’ in a while, so we did a bit of searching. The weather was, and still is HOT. We found pike just about everywhere we went, but the best pike fishing was concentrated in a couple areas. A couple pickerel and a decent perch rounded out the species caught fly-fishing. Fish were in 4′ to 10′ of water. Both sink-tips (with Clouser Minnows) and full-sinking lines produced. The usual swimbaits were also effective. Jack’s “cottonwood seed = poor fishing” theory was disproved on Friday both on the pike fishing and some hot lake trout jigging. The guys caught 4 nice lakers in probably less than an hour! We found plenty of bait and some nice fish shallow south of Lodi. All in all a fun day and very enjoyable. Water temps started at around 49/50 on top at the south end. By late in the day we had 61 on top! South winds had probably caused a momentary cool down at the south end. We had low 50s further north.
Seneca out of Sampson 6/7:
Did a full day with Chris and his son Brian. We had some superb pike action on the swimbaits on Saturday working 4′ to 15′ of water. Brian is 11 years old and had a great time catching his first pike and lake trout. He managed a 31″ northern and a 25″ laker on his own. He also landed a couple nice smallmouth bass. I’ve known Chris since around 1973 and we fished together a lot when we were back in school. The guys landed and released (unharmed) a lot of fish today! Chris lost count after around 20 or 25 pike. The pike fishing is simply excellent – the fish are nice sized running 25″ to 29″ on average. Two pike and lakers were kept for dinner. Alewives and sculpin is what we’re finding in the kept fish. Practicing a lot of catch and release ensures that this high-quality fishing will remain for the foreseeable future!
Otisco Lake 6/8:
Met my friend Jared at the launch just after 5:15 am this morning. I was tired as heck, but the thought of tangling with a Tiger Musky or big walleye was motivation enough to get up at “dark thirty”. We worked acouple points for 40 minutes or so without any action before moving up to the north end weedbeds. Within 15 minutes or so Jared hooked a “good fish” on a lipless crankbait. I got a glimpse of the nice musky before it ran under the boat. Then it came out and jumped a couple feet into the air! I won’t forget that spectacular landlocked salmon like aerial! Then the fish dug into the weeds and it was downhill from there 😉 Jared’s line wrapped around his rod tip and he was quickly able to unwrap it. But the fish was wrapped in some heavy pondweed. He decided to muscle it out, but the 12lb leaderless flouro broke and the fish was gone. That was it on the muskies for the day. He also had a nice walleye follow. We wound up catching some nice (and some small) bass – large and smallmouths. By 1 pm storms started threatening and we got off the lake. We’ll be back! H2O hit over 70 today, boat traffic was light to moderate – esp. for a hot Sunday.