Skaneateles Lake 6/26 AM
Guided Doug and his grandson Wesley for a 1/2 day starting at around 6:50 am. Action was the attraction today. They had been out with me around 5 years ago when Wes was 8 years old. We had a very tough AM that day with neutral lakers during an algae bloom. Wes was a bit young to laker jig back then. It can be hard to work the jigs properly and we wound up getting skunked apart from a laker I had hooked. That rod was handed off to a young Wes. But it still didn’t count as a laker of his own accord. Anyways, Doug and his son had booked a smallmouth trip with me here years ago – probably back around 2008 or 2009, and he wanted to give it a shot again, knowing that the action here can be nice and steady.
My buddy Mike had a great day out here over the past weekend, so I was able to get a fresh report from him. Mike had used Ned rigs and jerkbaits. I investing in some “Ned” stuff last year and was looking forward to giving it a try. Wesley loves fishing and fishes as much as he can these days at the ripe age of 13. He had never lure fished before. By the end of the AM he’d caught a bunch of rockbass along with some nice smallmouths to over 16″ on Ned rigs, jerkbaits and tube jigs. He did a great job with the techniques. He even redeemed himself on the lakers. We set up for jigging for about an hour and Wes nabbed a 21″ laker in around 90′ FOW. Doug dropped one and Wes actually had a couple others on for a few seconds.
It was a productive day all the way around. Boat traffic was light with the big holiday weekend just over a week away. The water here is high. It is also cloudier than I have ever seen it. Water temps were still cold – I think I had 58 or 59 to maybe 60 degrees.