I spent Tuesday afternoon fishing Lake Ontario out of Oswego Harbor, then it was over to Cayuga Lake to guide a 1/2 day trip today.
6/9: Lake Ontario out of Oswego Harbor - I do a weekly fishing report for Bill Hilts Jr. for the Buffalo News. He gets out on Lake Ontario quite often and is a great contact for what's happening out there. According to Bill, fishing this past week was hit or miss; Some guys got into the fish, some didn't. June is a time for transition out on the big lake - the thermocline hasn't yet set up and there's an overwhelming amount of warm water in the lake, which makes for scattered fish and difficulty pinpointing them. We deal with the same factors in the larger Finger Lakes.
I had a few days off and really wanted to get up on the big lake. Last year was the first year in a long time that I didn't fish Oswego at all. It's a fun day trip and I nearly always start out by swinging by New York Pizza in Cato. They nail it on pizza! Great pie, ingredients, price and more! It's a better value than anything down near Ithaca. The bridge on Rt. 38 is out by Weedsport, which makes for a longer drive and a good 10 mile detour. Oh well...
Very few boats were out on the lake today. The "improvements" at Wright's Landing are nearly done. There's a new walkway that's getting a lot of use by dog walkers and people looking for something to do. There are new flower beds around the new booth/bathrooms. The marina has been feminized to an extent. It doesn't have as much of the hard-core 1980s/1990s fisherman vibe to it. Now you almost feel in the way of the tourists when launching and there are way more cars riding around the boat ramp area that aren't supposed to be there, but then again, we're into June and Harborfest is a huge event for the City of Oswego, so I can't complain - the place definitely looks better.
The woman I bought my launch pass from told me that the fishing had been spotty over the past month but was hot the month before. That's normal. I went looking for Chinook salmon (aka Kings) and did not find any. I had an onshore easterly but it wasn't enough to bring in the cold water, so I was happy about that. There was a good amount of bait around the river outflow. I had around 54 to 56 degree water down 50'. I probably could have stayed around the river and had some action. I worked out to nearly 200' of water and didn't see much. I'm sure some nice browns, lakers and probably kings were around the outflow, but targeting them would probably be easier out deep. I had a few "peeks" at my jigs from what were probably lake trout. No bites there. The lake was fairly flat, with a few midges (non-biting small insects) out. I kept hearing this dog in the distance barking, "ruff, ruff, ruff." This dog needs better training because the lake was dead calm. Maybe it's just the only word he knows...
After 2 hours of fruitless searching and waiting, I headed to some shallow shoals to try for smallmouths. This is where things got interesting. I had around 59 or 60 degrees on the surface, but 54 down 10' near bottom. I worked green pumpkin tube jigs. I had a goby hit and then a cast or two later I hit a silver fish! I figured brown trout. It jumped a time or two and fought pretty good before tiring out. It was a cisco! What a thrill! It was the third one I've caught out here in the past 5 to 7 years and certainly the biggest at 19" long. I never heard of ciscoes being taken out here prior to maybe 2016. They are closely related to whitefish and distantly related to trout! They have an adipose fin. I used to see ciscoes sold at Wegman's marketed at "Smoked Chub." Chub is another name for them, but ciscoes are not chubs by any stretch. I've often wondered how cool it'd be to get to Lake Superior or Lake Simcoe and catch whitefish, burbot and ciscoes. Never in a million years would I have thought that I'd be able to drift flats and cast for ciscoes in Lake Ontario!
A couple casts later I was hooked up again! This time I landed a Landlocked Atlantic Salmon! It was around 20" long. They have to be 25" to keep in Lake Ontario. I caught one nice one a long time ago in Irondequoit Creek in Penfield NY, but this was my first one on Lake Ontario! And I caught it casting! After that, I wound up landing a fat smallmouth at 19.5". It was a tank and fought great with a couple of wild surfaces (it didn't quite clear the water.) By then it was getting late. I gave it a few more casts and was hooked up again! This time it was another cisco! A twin to my first one - both were 19". I kept both for dinner. I've never eaten one.
Just before writing this, I skinned a cisco fillet and trimmed off most of the lateral line. The fillet looks great - exactly like the whitefish fillets we used to get at Wegmans in the late-1970s/early 80s. I dredged the fillet in flour and sauteed it in olive oil with salt and pepper. It was fantastic! It's a very clean tasting fish. The flavor was nearly exactly like lake trout caught out of Keuka or Skaneateles Lakes - super clean tasting, not oily and zero "Lake Ontario flavor" or off-taste. (I personally don't notice a "Lake Ontario taste" anymore. It was there in the 1980s, but I think the lake is very clean now. Clients of mine who fish up there tell me that they DO notice a L.O. taste.) The meat is white and finer textured. You aren't seeing big flakes with these ciscoes. According to what I found online, ciscoes need to be eaten fresh. THEY DO NOT FREEZE WELL! So they are similar to grayling in Alaska - delicious, but not to be frozen.
They were feeding on round gobies, which was why they were where I caught them. There are some great casting opportunities out of Oswego. Who wouldn't want to cast for a mixed bag this time of year? You could catch walleyes, bass, browns, rainbows, coho, chinook and more! Conditions need to be just right, but man, that was a fun experience.
