2020: A great year....an awful year

 Writing this blog entry on the final days of 2020.  Covid and politics aside, it was a great year to be outdoors.  A lot has happened in 2020.

 Some of the highlights of the year involved Lake Alice, Cross Lake, Canandaigua Lake, Lake Ontario, Cayuga Lake and Irondequoit Bay.

We fished Lake Alice a few times this year.  One outing we kept 50 white perch.  Great eating fish that is curiously not popular with fisherman who fish for culinary rewards.  Another time, in the heat of the summer, we located a whole that contained 24-28” walleye.  In the middle of the day, directly under a hot sunny blue sky, we nailed em’.  We were very surprised as we did not know there was walleye in this lake.

The northern end of Canandaigua Lake produced some nice lake trout on the western shoreline at 125 feet of water.  Dave and I were very successful with our jigs.  I boiled the bones for stock which I used to make chowder during hunting season.  We smoked the trout using a special rub I had picked up in Florida.

Canandaigua Lake Trout

Another highlight was fishing out of the Port of Rochester for the first time.  Twice Dave and I went out, and Shu came once.  Both times we went two miles out and limited out with perch over 12”.  One time we were out and a pontoon boat with 4 fisherman came 4’ from us.  A whole Great Lake and they have to fish immediately next to us!  They were each seated in lawn chairs, their boated listed to the port side with the rear gas tank half under water.  Expensive trip for Shu as we were running to the honey hole, unbeknownst to him, he had twenty dollar bills flying out of his pocket.

Cross Lake Gar Pike

Cross Lake Walleye & Perch

Cross Lake and the Seneca River was a fun highlight this year.  In the spring we missed the crappie bite by a week.  We fished the South Bay of the lake where there were the biggest schools of shiners I have ever scene.

Later in the summer we got on the walleye in the trench and perch in the north end.  I also caught a huge gar pike.  In the fall Shu and I spent three days fishing the lake.  It was a strange outing as all the fish were at 30’ or deeper.  There was literally no fish on the screen under 30’.  We caught very little, but we really enjoyed staying at a nearby hotel and renting dock space from the Cross Lake Marina.

Other 2020 Fish Pictures

Jessica & Dave Cayuga Lake Trout

Jessica, Dave and I had a great outing on Cayuga Lake.  After several hours of not getting a bite with jigs we switched to trolling spoons.  Within an hour we caught ten beautiful lake trout.  Jessica had a blast as we let her pull all of them in.  Later we cooked come of the trout on cedar planks.  Lake the trout caught in  Canandaigua Lake earlier in the year, I boiled the skeletons for base stock to make chowder with later in the year.

Dave and I were out on Cayuga Lake on the northern end fishing for walleye and crappie.  All we caught were pickerel, probably 25-30.  I kept several of the ones over 24” as they are really good to eat.  I also wanted to practice cleaning them as they are like a pike with all the Y bones.  I used a YouTube video to help me with cleaning them and, while tedious, produced several really good fillets that I would smoke later.

Lake Ontario Lake Trout