Well the big "white elephant" in the Finger Lakes room, so to speak - is the rainfall of the storms from Wednesday night (5/7.) Here's what I know about the area lakes. First of all, the heavy intense rain was very localized but some areas, like the corridor from Moravia (Owasco Lake) to Mandana (Skaneateles Lake) got hammered. Crews are still cleaning up the mess and reinforcing some of the areas that were eroded away. Otisco Lake is a muddy mess. I'd expect Owasco Lake to be even worse. The lower (Ithaca) end of Cayuga Lake is also a mess, as is Seneca Lake's south end. Expect plenty of debris and some big stuff as well. Keuka Lake's main stem (north of Hammondsport) is a little bit murky and there's a little debris. No word on the northern part of the Penn Yan arm. I'm also not sure how Long Point is holding up on Cayuga Lake. No word on Canandaigua Lake or the smaller western Finger Lakes either.
I decided to stay on the northern portion of Skaneateles Lake for a couple of reasons today. Usually I love running south on this lake, but I do that all the time and with where I go and how I approach it, it's pretty predictable fishing. So I wanted to do something a bit more "out of the box." I was also concerned about debris further south. I decided to work water from around 20' to 50' deep with bladebaits. I figured I had a shot at three different species - I was either going to catch yellow perch, lake trout and/or walleyes. The lakers were very cooperative today and I nabbed four and lost one and missed one in my first hour and 15 minutes. Fish looked good and ran from 19" to 21". No luck on the perch or walleyes.
I tried an area I like for bass/trout and wound up nabbing a couple solid smallmouths, but action was slow - likely due to the cold front and lack of sun. These fish love moving up on rocky areas as the sun heats things up. Today was cold and overcast. I went back to my blade and picked up another solid laker and missed a hellacious hit as well. One of these days I hope to hook one of the 15 to 20lb lake trout that are present in this lake! The lake conditions were mostly clear on the east side of the lake and very slightly "chalky" on the west shore. Fishing was good (I fished from around 2:15 pm until 5:45 pm - not long) and water temp was around 44 degrees. The lake is very high but not flooding.
