Skaneateles Lake 11/28 + Cayuga Lake 11/29
Guided a half day on Skaneateles Lake yesterday and got out for around 6 hours with my buddy Mike today. Here’s the breakdown:
11/28 Skaneateles Lake: Guided Eric and his friend Brett starting around 9 am. Eric has a place on the lake and mainly trolls for lake trout. He wanted to learn some different techniques for catching rainbows/salmon on the lake. It was cold and we had a high of maybe 38 degrees plus a little bit of rain. The predicted north winds didn’t come up until around 11 am and that hurt us a bit.
We worked a few different areas and finally started contacting some fish. The jigging we do this time of year is tricky stuff and as I was demonstrating a few things I wound up getting a hit from a nice 18″ landlocked salmon. Brett started contacting some nice smallmouth bass including a 17.5″ fish and even a double on one cast! Eric nabbed a solid perch and had some hits and a follow or two from what were likely trout. The most important thing is that the guys did a good job dialing in the technique and key areas.
11/29 Cayuga Lake out of Myers: Got out with my buddy Mike starting around 10:30 am. It was around 32 degrees out this AM so we decided against an early start. We worked a bunch of areas both old and new and found similar results – plenty of dink salmon widely distributed. Expect the fall of 2016 and all of 2017 to be banner years for Cayuga salmon, but this fall thus far sizeable (legal) fish have been few and far between. I caught a small brown trout (13″ to 14″) on a fly and Mike caught some dink salmon as well as one around 15″ (still a dink by Cayuga standards.) We had a lot of short hits and follows. Mike nailed one laker around 21″ on a swimbait he was casting and I also caught one vertically.
Mike released his laker but I kept mine. A stomach check revealed loads of gobies – my laker had at least 6 to 8 inside.
Keuka Lake Report: Angling Zone friend Jeff reported the best laker jigging of the year on Keuka Lake today. They are hungry and aggressive and from shallow to deep. Fish are thin and there’s nothing in their stomachs. Jeff had a 27″ fish that weighed a meagher 5.5lbs. A 27″ Cayuga or Seneca fish is typically 7lbs+ during the season and probably 6.5 or better after spawning.