Sodus Bay 8/2
Guided regular Mark I. for a full day starting just after 10 am. We decided a gar trip was in order. I hadn’t been on the bay in over 2 years (last year we had the extremely high water on Lake Ontario) so I was looking forward to the trip. Mark and I cruised along the area that had produced solid gar fishing for us over the past 10+ years and were not able to locate any fish. We slowed down and he fly-casted around but we still never saw a gar.
Last time we were out here Mark had some fun jigging out in the lake, landing a couple lakers and a steelhead, so we gave that a try. The number of fish Mark had chasing his jigs was impressive. But they just would not grab. Mark had one good momentary hit/hookup on bottom for a second, but that was it. He had at least 20 to 30 solid follows but again, despite changing colors, sizes, retrieves – we just couldn’t connect. We tried smallmouth fishing one point for an hour or so and only caught gobies.
We then hit another part of Lake Ontario and had more follows but no hits. So back to the Bay we went. I had an idea as to where the gar might have gone so we logically worked our way around a part of the bay heading back to our usual hotspot. Sure enough, I found the gar! We had dozens of fish around us including some solid 40″+ specimens. Mark had a hookup from a smaller gar but it got off. He had a few more follows then one more hookup and that was it. Tough day – I felt we were consistently “a day late and a dollar short.” Had we spent more time trying to locate the gar in the AM or perhaps tried the lake first thing (earlier in the AM) maybe we would have scored. But hindsight is always 20/20. The weather was gorgeous and we were very close to having had a great day catching but it was not to be. The bay water looked great – nice and clear. Plenty of lush weeds were around but the harvesters were going full bore. The channel is also being dredged right now.