Skaneateles Lake 9/4

Reports

Guided Leo and Ada today for the full day starting around 8:15 am. I was ready for a wet miserable day, since I’d read the weather forecasts. I had asked Leo if they wanted to do the trip. They were in. We never had a drop of rain all day long.

The fishing was exceptional. I swam in the lake on Sunday from around 12′ FOW on in. I saw one bass. The last 4 trips I’ve done showed the best fishing in deeper water – from roughly 27′ to 35′ for the most part. So we started deep. And caught rock bass after rock bass after rock bass. The overcast and windy conditions were conducive to fish moving up. Normally I always check the shallows first. We had two hookups out deep of decent bass then we moved up. The shallows were great, with tube jigs providing great action, though surely a spinnerbait or maybe even topwater would’ve also produced. But these fish were eating crawfish big time.

Leo and Ada had a ton of hits and managed to land around 25 bass on the day, most legal fish. They easily lost that many and missed a bunch as well. We had two fish over 18″. The bass were moving up to feast on crayfish. I had them dropshot some deep water and we caught bass there too – incl. some big ones. Best dropshot baits were Lunker City Ozmos and Ribsters. Gulp minnows also worked great as did my favorite discontinued Power Bait Dropshot worms in Emerald Shiner. Green Pumpkin Tubes fished with 1/4 oz jigheads did best for our shallower fish.

Only a few boats were on the lake. H2O was 73 on top. Just exceptional bassin’ and the best bite I’ve seen on the lake since the season opened.