Owasco Lake 10/30

Reports

Guided Mark I. today for a full-day trip getting underway around 7:45 am.  As we slowly motored down the outlet at Emerson Park, it was very apparent that the morning southerly thermal was blowing hard!  We had a slow run down the lake with some 2′ to 3′ waves.  Don’t let anybody tell you that the smaller Finger Lakes can’t get rough – they certainly can.

It was a bit choppy for productive fly-fishing so we set up with gear for pike.  Our first area didn’t produce much until the end of our drift, when Mark tied into a beautiful pike.  After a good fight, I slipped the net under a 37″er!  It was fat too, and Mark felt it was heavier than his previous best fish at 39″.  Conditions weren’t great for pike, but he did nab a couple more in the 25″ range.  Like I mentioned before, it’s good to see some young fish here.  We certainly haven’t seen many pike – old or young, on Cayuga’s southern portions in a long time.

I had Mark try some jerkbaits for bass for maybe an hour in one area.  He lost one near the boat and also landed a couple nice perch including a 13″er.   Later on, we set up for trout jigging and he caught an undersized rainbow.  Our last area resulted in some nice lake trout including a couple 25″ to 26″ post-spawn fish plus a 19″er that he kept for dinner.  It was a perfect day to be out and water temps were at 57 degrees.  We saw maybe another 5 or 6 boats out on the water during the course of the day.

Mark's 37" Northern PIke!