Skaneateles Lake 11/8 + 11/9
Skaneateles 11/8: I’ve been putting a lot of miles on my truck and hours on my boat lately, making pilgrimages to Skaneateles Lake. On Sunday I rode down with Jim from California/Alaska for a day of fly-fishing. Conditions were as tough as they generally get for the lake – it was sunny and there was very little wind. In the fall this isn’t a “skunking sentence” but it still can make for very difficult rainbow trout fishing. Jim’s an accomplished fly-fisher and had his best luck using either a long sink tip (I think it was 24′) or a full sinking RIO Deep 7 line. Fishing wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either and Jim managed to land a few lakers, some nice bass and some perch on the fly. Water temps are hovering around 51 degrees. Jim was an absolute pleasure to spend a day with and he regaled me with some great tales of Alaskan fishing adventures.
11/9: Today I did a full day with Jeff K from NJ. He’s fished with me a bunch of times before – including earlier this year for pike on Seneca and lakers on Cayuga. Our Seneca trip was our best pike fishing of the year on that lake. For today, we brought fly-fishing gear, but wound up sticking with the jigging. Fishing started out very slow and my two favorite areas really didn’t produce much. We worked a few other places and found a heavy concentration of active lakers and some nice 10″ to 14″ perch. Bass were also in the mix. Jeff wound up with a nice mixed bag of big perch and lakers for the frying pan. No sign of rainbows today for us, but had we fly-fished I think we might have hooked some. Lakers and perch ranged from 5′ to maybe 30′ of water. Another fun day!
Both days featured gorgeous weather! Air temps pushed over 64 degrees today and the sun shone on both days. Who says November fishing has to be uncomfortable? Plenty of dates remain open in November. Think pike, bass, trout and salmon! On days I’m not booked, I’ll be out on the water.