Reports

Guided Robert (who has a place on the lake) and his brother Jim for a short 1/2 day.  I do not guide this lake on summer weekends and was reluctant to do the trip today but figured it’d be worth a shot.  When I arrived at the state launch at 7:50 am I was somewhat aghast but not surprised to find the parking lot was entirely full – mainly due to a bass tournament.  In addition, two single vehicles were parked in the boat parking only area, which was not a courteous thing to do on a busy sunny weekend (though I don’t think the people meant any harm.)  I slowly started to prepare my boat wondering what I was going to do – maybe drive to Mandana, when I spotted a man heading to the parking lot from the launch.  He told me he was pulling his boat out and he mentioned which truck/trailer was his!  So I lucked into a spot.  I backed into his spot while two more boats pulled in to the ramp and started launching.  Fortunately I was able to keep this spot and launched without problem. For guiding between June and September, I will only do weekdays here.  Mandana is tricky for one guy and I’m not a fan of the fees.

Fishing was slow today due mainly to the calm conditions.  We had some action in the morning when the wind was up with a few 14″ smallmouths and another legal one along with three sublegals.  The guys had luck on swimbaits, tubes, dropshot and Superflukes.  We dropped Jim back to the dock after around 90 minutes and knocked off a half hour early (after a late start) so Robert could catch the SU game on TV.   So overall Robert only fished around 3 hours.  There were areas we could have fished that would have been productive but would’ve required a good run and he wanted to get back to his lake house to do a few things.  Water temps are around 67.  There are some algae particulates in the water.  Visibility is about 10′ at best.

bass Skaneateles Lake