Guided Tony and his brother-in-law Pete for a full-day trip targeting northern pike. We got underway at 8 am with strong south winds. We got out of the wind and worked some post-spawn areas. Tony fly-fished the entire day and Pete went with my gear. Pete had a couple of hits on spoons and stickbaits but what they were wasn't clear. Sometimes exuberant perch will take a shot at a pike lure. Later in the trip, Pete did nab a 12" perch on an X-Rap. Overall fishing was very slow. We had some areas of warmer water and we also worked some late-spring zones without luck. Pete had one pike follow in his lure in one area - that was it. No grabs on the fly and Tony was a terrific caster. Tony worked various fly set-ups including a couple of mine, but we just couldn't raise a northern.
If I were to come back on my own knowing what I know now, I'd go with a more bottom oriented approach - perhaps slow down with some jigs, swimbaits and bladebaits. I had Tony work some of his flies slowly at times; fly-fishing can be deadly for lethargic post-spawn fish. Sometimes pike will recover from the spawn in deep water - I've seen 45" skinny females taken with sawbellies off of the swim pier at Taughannock in May - that's deep water (50'+)!
It's hard to say what might have worked. This has been my busiest start to a guiding season ever, and I just have not had time to fish and otherwise scout out areas that I have trips scheduled on. I have a free day tomorrow and it's over to Utica to drop-off a trolling motor for repair.
At the end of the day I ran into some people I'd met through a client and they had been jigging Owasco today and fished Cayuga yesterday. They had a slow jig bite today on Owasco.
It has been a weird weather year with a super cold winter, combined with one very hot week, and a total of over five inches of rain in the past 6 weeks.