Guided a half-day trip on Owasco Lake today starting just after 6:40 am with Jack and Erik. This lake really colored up - or should I say "discolored up" late last week. We had terrific fishing here for the most part over the past 2+1/2 to 3 weeks. Last Thursday the 10th was superb fishing, but the water colored up a bit (algae?) the next day, although we still had solid fishing. I shifted over to Seneca last Saturday and was off on Sunday. Friends were out Sunday and reported a "brutal" bite with some very good anglers getting skunked or narrowly avoiding it. We were set to fish Seneca Lake today, but Jack and Erik drive up from the Utica area and it is already a long drive. Adding another 45 minutes was not feasible for them, so last night we decided on Owasco Lake, which both of the guys really enjoyed fishing when we fished it last year. We all figured that yesterday's strong winds would mix up the water a bit and improve the water clarity.
It was a good call. The visibility in the lake was around 4' to 6', which isn't bad. That being said, we didn't land a lot of fish today - four to be exact, but the "fishing" was exciting and will be forever remembered. Erik got us started by hooking a landing a beautiful 26" wild rainbow trout! It fought great and we were lucky to get it in. To top that off, about 10 minutes later he hooked another blazing hot fish!!! This fish skyrocketed out of the water at least three times, jumping high! It did some insane twisting and running before the 12lb Seaguar flourocarbon just snapped! This wasn't a knot failure, this fish just kicked our ass! The day was made after that, but Jack managed a very hard fighting 29"+ lake trout that took some time to bring in. These fish are well fed! Jack caught another laker later in the AM, but the bite window overall was fairly short. I'm hopeful that this lake's trout jigging will continue to improve as the water stabilizes after last night's hard blow.
