Skaneateles Lake 10/24 + Keuka Lake 10/25
Skaneateles Lake 10/24: Had a late postponement for a guide trip, so I met my buddy Mike at the State Launch around 9:30 am. We decided it’d be fun to get some perch. We also brought some bass gear. Perch fishing was pretty good. We had to sort through a lot of dinks, but we managed to nail 30+ keepers (9″+) fish between the two of us. We caught most between 25′ to 35′ FOW. Plenty of rockbass also made it onboard. We took some casts for smallmouths and caught 7 or 8 decent fish. I missed what appeared to be a rainbow trout or salmon on a fluke. Mike landed a lake trout around 18″ while perchin’. We had one or two jumbo perch, but overall most were small. We probably tossed back 40 or more dinks. Lake level is dropping. Water temps were around 55/56.
Keuka Lake 10/25: As much as I would’ve liked to fish locally, the forecast for strong winds made Keuka Lake the best choice. I met Don and his son Kurt at the launch around 8 am. Laker jigging was slow to start but came on strong after a couple hours. Before we quit, the fish were hitting well and the guys even had a double. But overall the conditions weren’t great for lakers. Kurt’s a serious angler and we had a good time talking fishing.
PM: After winding up my AM half day, I met John Sander at the launch with his girlfriend Pam. She’s been getting into fishing lately and we were hoping she’d land a laker or two. I hadn’t fished with John in around 6 years! He’s been busy as heck with a lot of family/personal stuff, so it felt great to get out. We keep in touch regularly and I owe a huge chunk of my fishing knowledge to him via his incredible “Sanders Fishing Guides” that were required reading (and still are!) Hard to believe he wrote those books while in his 20s! Many of the patterns I do on the FLs are things I gleaned from that guide. Fishing started out slowly, but we had a good window or two and managed to boat 1/2 dozen lakers. Pam caught a couple beauties so the trip was a success on that end. We had a really nice dinner at the Tavern afterwards. Very good food over there! We marked a good amount of bait. Plenty of lakers are available throughout Keuka Lake at this point in time. They are on the feed heavily!