Skaneateles Lake 7/18
Spent the whole day on Skinny today. Started with 1/2 day guided trip with Arti and his dad (or son Arti). Basically Art Jr. and Sr.;-) I hadn’t been on the lake in two weeks, so it took a bit of searching to find some numbers of fish. As usual, there are bass just about everywhere on this lake. Shallow, deep and in-between. On rocks, sand and weeds also. We found fish scattered throughout the lake. Art Jr. was flyfishing and after about 1 year of fly-fishing is a heck of a caster. He had some nice fish eyeing and following popper and slider flies but grabs were hard to come by. His dad fishes about once a year and I spent some time showing him a few techniques incl. brushing up on his casting. He managed to get a few smallmouths and had quite a few hits. Some big fish were around, but they were very neutral. They’d show up underneath the lures and take a half-hearted grab then retreat into the depths. We found a stretch of water that held quite a few nice fish and Art Jr. hooked up on a “jailbait” fly – which is designed to imitate a soft jerkbait. It’s a neat fly but needs some work. It still doesn’t have the great fluke action. I read about the fly pattern in the “Mid Atlantic Fly-Fisher” a couple years ago in an article written by Lefty Kreh. I’m going to try to modify it soon and get ‘er workin’. 😉 BTW – a few smallish (12″) rainbows are in the mix.
After the trip I went back out on my own to try finding some more fish. I found a bunch on a med-depth weedy flat, but the “catching” was the same. The fish were following flukes “ad nauseum” but weren’t committing very much. I had some good grabs but nothing compared to last month. A drop shot rig with a discontinued Berkely Power drop-shot worm did the trick and I managed a decent fish or two before calling it a day. I caught fish in 30′ or more, but mostly just dinks. Around 15′ of water is where I saw plenty of 2lb+ smallies roaming around. Some may still be spawning – it looked like it. The shallows also held tons of dinks. Fish looked very healthy. I didn’t see any fish showing any outward VHS signs and I also didn’t spot any dead fish. That’s encouraging for now 🙂