Skaneateles Lake 9/8
Did a half day and a 6 hour trip today. Here’s how things went:
AM: Started a bit after 8 am with Gordon, who prefers to fly-fish. Showers had just cleared and the wind was picking up when we started. We had decent shallow fly-fishing for smallmouths with around 10 or 11 fish landed. Most were smallish but spunky 11″ fish, though we had one around 15″. An olive woolly bugger worked well on an intermediate line. Dropshotting produced plenty of rockbass and a smallmouth or two as well. A few perch also hit the bugger. I felt we could have had some topwater bass action this morning, but we didn’t try it.
PM: Met Rob at the launch and we headed out around 1 pm. He’d rather throw crankbaits and spinnerbaits for bass than tubes/dropshot, so that’s what he did for the most part. He also had a cool technique for topwater that a buddy of his came up with in Florida that he tried. The crankbait action was pretty good. He also did well on a Superfluke for a while. We did some dropshotting and the rockbass were aggressive. Decent afternoon with bass to over 16″ and a bit better average size than the AM bite.
Water temps are cooling and perch are starting to show up in slightly better numbers than previous weeks. We saw some solid smallmouths today in the 16″ to 17″+ range – often showing up under or around hooked fish. As long as the weather keeps cooling and the winds stay up, I expect good fishing. Bigger fish would be in the mix tomorrow – there’s no doubt in my mind that they are activating. Winds were high today and very few boats were out. Absolutely fantastic weather conditions out there – cool and sunny.