Skaneateles Lake 4/9
Fishing is pretty much “par for the course” on Skaneateles Lake. It’s a typical early season pattern with rainbows and salmon in pretty tight to shore and basically hitting lethargically in the cold water. Find warm water and you find the more active fish. Fly-fishing was the ticket today and Willy and myself landed around a half dozen rainbows including one legal landlocked salmon. Nice to see the high percentage of rainbows. We caught them up to 22″ on streamers. We lost/missed another 1/2 dozen hits/fish.
Water temps range from 37 to 42 degrees. Fish came in 10′ or less of water. We kept one 17″ rainbow for supper and it appeared to be feeding on chewing gum, marshmallows or tapioca. We primarily worked the northern half of the lake having luck on both shores. There were quite a few boats out there, most of them perch fishing.
I expect very good to excellent trout fishing on this lake over at least the next 6 weeks barring any weird hot spells. Fly fishing and spin fishing will both be effective!