Reports

Strong winds and heavy rain have numbered my fishing days as of late.  We had an unusual warm up in February, but overall air temps have stayed cold ever since.  We were deluged by rain on April 29th/30th.  Expect all the large Finger Lakes to have debris and mudlines.  Conditions should improve markedly by the day.

Skaneateles Lake 4/28:   Got out here for a crack at some perch and trout/salmon. I brought fly-fishing gear but never broke it out.  Fishing was very good and I managed a nice catch of perch including one jumbo 14″er.  I landed a nice 24″ rainbow and a 19″ salmon along with a nice lake trout and some bass.

I also caught a walleye at 18″.  I have been corresponding with DEC and I don’t get the impression that they are having a lot of success eradicating walleyes from this lake.  Congrats again to the idiot(s) that illegally dumped them in here.  Oh well.  They will add a new dimension to the fishery here.  Rainbow trout numbers are lower than I’ve ever seen them, but the rainbow fishing is still pretty damn good, so hopefully the species will be able to co-exist on some level.  Canandaigua Lake supported both species in the 1940s/1950s, but they didn’t have landlocked salmon and there was a lot more forage in that lake back then (smelt and alewives.)  We’ll see how everything shakes out here.  Water temps were around 41 – 43, which is still pretty darn cold for this time of year.

Skaneateles Lake 5/1:  Got out here again after having so much fun earlier in the week.  I started where I left off and had a very similar day – I landed a bunch of nice perch including a couple mambos, a handful of solid smallmouths that fought great, another solid rainbow at 23″, a lake trout and yep – another walleye, this one at 19″. Water temp is still cold here.  Lake level is high.  I dropped a big fish – it fought like a 25″+ rainbow though I never saw it, but I’m getting good at telling what I have on my line here just from the battle.  Had some nasty rain on the run back to the launch but it was worth it.

Lake Ontario out of Oswego Harbor 5/2:  Got up here around 1:30 pm.  Nice to see gas here at around $2 a gallon.  I can’t figure that one out.  Usually Ithaca is by far the priciest gas along Rt. 34 and Auburn is cheap.  Now it was around $2.39 in Auburn and cheaper in Ithaca.  Go figure.   There have been some upsides to this lockdown.

People are asking me when I can guide.  I have no clue.  The Governor has not laid out any specifics yet on when businesses can re-open. We are on “pause” until May 15th.  That’s all I know.  Regions will open up depending on when certain milestones are met.  I’m in the “southern tier” as opposed to the “Finger Lakes.”  The Southern Tier includes Tompkins (my county) Tioga county and Steuben county, along with Broome County.  Broome includes Binghamton – which has seen new Covid cases.  The counties west of there have not seen any new cases in probably a week or more.  Some never saw more that a few during this whole time!  So nobody knows.  I’m hoping May 15th,but I’m guessing it’ll be June 1st.  As soon as I’m good to go, I’ll post it.  I still don’t know anybody personally that has it.  I won’t say I was right about this stuff but….

As you might imagine, there was a massive flow of water coming out of the Oswego River.  And it’s MUDDY.  I went out looking for chinook and lakers.  I didn’t mark any bait off the bat but I didn’t spend much time in the muddy warm water, which is where it’d likely be.  I worked an area I like and was able to hook into a solid, hard fighting fish within a half hour or so.  After the digging battle, I slipped my musky net under a FAT lake trout!  This was probably the fattest laker I’ve ever caught or seen, it spit up an alewife just as I netted it.  It was 27″ long but I’d bet it was over 9lbs – maybe even 10.  I had some other laker activity but never had any other hookups.  I did mark some bait as well in shallow.  Lake level is HIGH but not quite flooding yet.  But unfortunately we are heading in that direction again this year.