Skaneateles Lake 4/14
Guided Jeff and Clifford for a full day starting around 7:45 am. Conditions were great from the get-go for casting hairjigs to trout and within an hour Jeff had landed 2 nice rainbows, 16″ and 19″ (and chunky) and Cliff had landed a solid 23″ laker and dropped one. Then as is often the case, the conditions changed. A few bass managed to hit our tube jigs but the lack of wind made covering water (and not spooking trout) difficult.
We tried a lot of areas with little to show. We eventually wound up north and found some decent numbers of nice smallmouth bass in shallow. Hair jigs and tube jigs did the trick.
I had Jeff try out my new setup featuring Berkley’s new super thin Nanofil in 6lb test. I used the recommended double Albright knot to the attached 6lb test Invis-X flourocarbon leader. The setup casted with ease and worked well. The line is very, very thin and incredibly sensitive. Jeff was throwing a 1/16oz perch pattern hairjig without difficulty. We didn’t even try the normal 1/8 to 1/4oz jigs. They likely would have flown!
The line to leader knot did fail on a nice fish at the end of the day, so I’ll be tweaking a few things in the future. When I tied it and checked it, it was very strong and secure. Also after landing a decent fish, the line would tend to dig into the spool for the next cast or two, but then would remedy itself. Overall we were very pleased with the product despite the two minor shortcomings. I am going to move up to 8lb Flouro (I like the hardness more than the supposed invisibility of flouro) and see how the knot holds. I will be checking it often. I will also try the Berkley Flouro in various line weights and see what “catches” the best and what ties the strongest knots.
One dock is in (basically one whole side of the launch.) Water temps ranged from 41 to 49 degrees. Warmest water was on the N. end of the lake.