Skaneateles Lake 5/6
Guided Tony for the full day today starting around 7:45 (am.) It was great seeing only 3 boat trailers at the boat launch. Of course the usual broken trailer lights from the crowded weekend littered the parking lot. This place is a crowded mess on hot weekends! The lot still needs to be re-striped and users need to be a little less selfish in trying to use the lot when it is clearly full. Mandana’s launch is only a few miles away.
Fishing was very good today. Tony did well on smallmouth bass up to around 17″, large perch to around 14″ and the salmonids. Two nice salmon came to the net – a 21″+ fish and one around 16″ or 17″. He also landed two rainbows – a 17″ and a 24.5″ beauty. A pickerel and rockbass rounded out the species he caught today. I should mention that Tony is a top-notch angler. Working light jigs in deep water isn’t super easy and can take patience and concentration. Surface temps climbed to 60 degrees on the north end, but it was deceiving. A drop with my temp probe showed 52 degrees down just 8′. That clearly explains last year’s lake trout caught with the high surface temps! Most of the lake was around 42 to 44 degrees. Rainbows came from deeper water today -20’+. Bass haven’t yet moved up in heavy numbers around most of the lake. Hot lure was one of my home-tied hairjigs, though a tube jig also produced.
High point of the day wasn’t the gorgeous 24″+ rainbow (though that certainly was one of them,) it was seeing a large bald eagle perched on a big tree fairly close to us! Tony spotted it. What an amazing sight! I’ve only seen a few bald eagles before but never one so close. Such majestic birds!