Reports

Got out to Skaneateles Lake today for close to 6 hours of fishing starting at 12:30 pm.  Only a few anglers were out there today – the parking lot was mostly empty.  DEC hasn’t had a lot of success with their spring pre-spawn walleye nettings.  These fish are pretty elusive in Skaneateles Lake.  As I’ve said from the beginning of this walleye fiasco here, we’re going to see enough walleyes to destroy the rainbow trout fishery – which they’ve already done, but not enough to make for much of a walleye fishery.   Yes, some hard core walleye guys will figure them out and do alright – mostly at night in all likelihood, but it’s doubtful if this will ever be much of a walleye lake.  For the casual angler, they’ll never be anything apart from an occasional bonus fish taken when perch fishing, bass fishing or trolling for lake trout.

Walleyes are amongst the most light-sensitive fish in fresh water.  Today (unfortunately) the lake was very flat with calm winds for much of the day.  On top of that, the sun was shining bright at times through the cloud gaps.  I could make out the bottom in over 20′ of water!  That’s clear! I spent half of my day working water from around 20′ to 40’+ deep around what I figured were spawning areas.  I was hoping to nab a few (or at least one) post-spawn ‘eye.  Instead, I caught a few nice perch and some lake trout.  All in all, I caught enough fish for a few meals.  The perch are mostly spawning and post-spawn here right now.  Surface temperatures ran around 49 to 50 degrees.  I didn’t spend much time shallow today, but oddly I never encountered a single bass.   I worked bladebaits (which resulted in most of my fish), tube jigs (zippo), jerkbaits (zippo) and hair jigs (one perch that I tossed back and one laker.)

One good little Finger Lakes tip (I’m sure it’s valid in other lakes throughout the country – like in the Adirondacks or Canada as well) is that when you find spawning perch, you’ll often find lake trout there to feed on their eggs.  In the fall, when you find spawning lake trout, the yellow perch will be there doing the same thing to the lake trout eggs!  I’ve seen it a lot here, and also on Keuka Lake.  I’m sure it happens elsewhere in the Fingers, like on Canandaigua and Seneca Lake too.  I first read about that phenomena in the Sanders Fishing Guide.

Sooner or later I have to give the night fishing here a good shot!