Reports

Guided Curt for 1/2 day today starting at around 10:30 am.  He’s been trying to time a landlocked salmon trip with me for a good year or more now, and today looked like a great day to give it a shot.  He brought along a couple of flyrods and we also had some spinning gear onboard.  It was nice to finally see a new dock with a “bumper-strip” and a couple cleats in it over at Schamel’s.  That’s a big improvement!   The lake temperature is around 47.5 degrees on top.  The water looks nice and clear.

We had more wind than we could use today.  No luck on the fly fishing gear.  As soon as Curt went to spinning gear, he started getting some hits from mostly small salmon (11″ range.)  These fish are going to be next year’s prizes.  Unfortunately they often maim themselves by taking lures in too deep.  I’ve even seen it with flies.  Curt hooked a solid after a couple of dinks and I netted a 19.5″ salmon for him.  Shortly thereafter he lost a larger fish.  In short order, the fish moved on and we were not able to locate them again.  Keep in mind that we had some fairly brutal wind-gusts to over 20 mph, so we weren’t able to fish as thoroughly as I would have liked.  We also couldn’t fish certain areas.  I had him try some hair jigs, swim baits and blade baits to no avail.  The fish we saw today all looked nice and clean, so that was encouraging!

Most dates remain open going into 2024 (already!)  The state launch is still open on Skaneateles Lake.  Now’s a good time for bass, trout, perch and more over there.   Cayuga Lake is producing lake trout and occasional smallmouth bass.   Owasco Lake is good for pike this time of year.  Keuka Lake should be fishing well for lake trout along with pickerel, perch and bass.  I expect some good pike fishing on Seneca Lake too, but need to do more scouting over there.  Stay tuned!