Great early Summer Fishing on Keuka Lake

It has been a great early summer of fishing.  We have caught huge smallmouth, perch, 1lb sunfish, lake trout, pickerel, largemouth, bullhead, and crappie.  With the exception of the lake trout we have been catching everything off the infamous finger lake perch rigs using fatheads from either the Outdoor Store in Bloomfield or Bubba's Bait near Branchport.  Both are excellent bait stores and would recommend them.

Jake great fish!

The pickerel have been fun to catch and I finally am getting much better at cleaning them.  They have the y bones of the Esox family that make they extremely difficult to clean.  I found a you-tube video of a person cleaning an Oneida Lake pickerel to be very helpful.  Pickerel are excellent to eat.  My friend swears by pickerel patties.

Ben's nice trout

Charlies 1st lake trout

Cole from the dock!?!

Uncle Matt with "doubles"

Almost spooled me on 2lb test

Dan with a huge rock bass

3 deer swimming across lake

What has been particularly fun is that I have been able to fish a lot with close friends, family and all three of my godsons.  One early morning at about 6:00am on the east side of the fork I was anchored about 20 yards off shore and I saw three deer walk down to the water's edge. I thought they were getting a drink when I watched them slowly walk out into the water and started swimming across the lake.  I could not believe it!! i thought I had seen it all.  After 30 minutes I lost sight of them heading to the opposite shoreline, almost a mile away.  30 minutes later I could not believe my eyes as I watched them swim all the way back across the lake to where they started!!!  Unbelievable.

Rare largemouth

The fish are moving into deeper water as the water temperature warms up.  The perch and smallmouth are hanging around 25 feet deep now.  I jigged up a lake trout last Saturday that was 160' deep.  Overcast days generally outproduce the sunny days for us.

Big big big small mouth July 2016