Skaneateles Lake 4/29
Guided Mark out on Skaneateles Lake. Mark’s fished with me a couple times before and we took a few chances trying some different stuff. Lures used were hair jigs and stickbaits, with nearly all the fish coming on hair-jigs. Fishing was pretty good for big yellow perch. Mark landed a handful of nice perch in different areas including a couple 14″ fish. We didn’t concentrate on the perch, but kept working “new areas”. Smallmouth bass are starting to show up as bonus fish in 23′ to 27′ of water on hair jigs. Mark landed a couple legal salmon and he had opportunities for quite a few salmon and possible rainbows today. I was surprised not to see any lakers today.
Water temps ranged from 39 early on to 48 north of the state launch.
In my opinion, fly-fishing remains the most effective method for catching early (and late) season trout and salmon in this lake. An intermediate or floating line keeps the fly high in the water column, in the strike zone. Jigs work well too, but I’ve been most impressed with the results of fly-rodding on this lake. As would be expected, I take very few perch on this lake with the flies. Sinking lines would probably take perch.