Keuka Lake out of Keuka Lake State Park 7/18

Guided Chris for a full-day starting at around 8:15 am.  He rents a place on this lake just about every year for around a week and usually fishes bass with live-bait.  He wanted to learn some approaches with artificials, so that's what we did today.  Years ago, I taught him lake trout jigging and on our first trip on Cayuga Lake he caught a gorgeous rainbow.  A few weeks later he sent me photos of a 32" rainbow he nabbed on Canandaigua along with some nice browns and lakers.  A little knowledge can be deadly (to the fish) in Chris's hands!

We had a fine day today.  The weather was supremely gorgeous and although the mild front that came through last night may have slowed the bass bite down a bit, it was a way nicer day to be out on the water.  The goal was to learn today anyways.  I am not fishing here enough these days at all to be really dialed in on the bass - I just have to draw from a lot of years on the lake starting in the 1980s, but even then, I never fished here very consistently.

I went over some favorite shallow tactics, mid-depth tactics and deeper approaches.  I had him work soft jerkbaits, tube jigs, swimbaits and bladebaits.  There's a lot of crossover with these patterns and my approach to soft jerkbaits isn't a whole lot different than with hard baits;  my approach to tube jigs is very similar to Ned rigs and so on.  These tactics have helped me catch fish on lakes as diverse as Lake Ontario to Oneida Lake, Skaneateles Lake and so on.  It's a great bunch of confidence baits to have in your arsenal!

The great thing today, was that Chris caught fish on everything he tried!  We had some decent smallmouths on the Super Flukes, he had a rock bass on a tube, a northern pike on a swimbait and a nice smallmouth on the blade bait.  To top it off, he'd never caught a Keuka Lake lake trout and he managed to jig one of those up too!  I had him try a lot of different parts of the lake up both the Penn Yan and Branchport Arms.  It was fun getting around today.

As I write this, Chris texted me to say that the lake trout was "phenomenal!"  That's a good word to describe lake trout out of Keuka Lake.  They are very pure, clean, wonderful eating fish.

My truck ran great today, so replacing the electronic control module did the trick.  It's nice to have wheels again!

For anyone interested, this pike came from around 30' to 40' of water.  This is where I think most of them are this time of year, both here, on Owasco Lake and on many other clear, deep, cold water lakes.  I get asked about pike in the Finger Lakes and my favorite months for them are October and November, and then a toss-up between May and December.  Next would be June (mostly early-June) and then late-September.  We've had some luck with them by accident in the summer on Owasco Lake while trying to catch browns.  The pike are in the same depths as the browns.  On Cayuga Lake we had a bite-off one time in around 70 FOW near a brown trout area.  If pike were all we had, I'd target them, but I much prefer to fish them when they are more accessible and I can pinpoint them easier.

I talked to a pike specialist that lived on Keuka Lake and he claims to have caught some 40"+ fish there - up 48", trolling along the thermocline.  That's pretty neat stuff!   Big fish also get taken here through the ice when we get enough of it to fish.

I am happy to do trips like this with people who want to gain more confidence fishing. Learning new techniques can be tricky at times and time-consuming.  It's very rewarding to learn something on your own, but it's also nice at times to have the learning curve seriously shortened!  Life can be too short and we don't all have a dozen or more dates to fish a month.  I've taught hundreds of students of all ages how to fish and fly-fish right from the get-go over at Cornell.  In my guiding, I've done a good couple thousand trips plus, so by now I'd hope I have a clue!  Feel free to inquire about tutorial-type trips, whether for lake trout, pike or just to learn general tactics!