Spring Fishing 2023 Perch, Trout, and Salmon

 Early April saw crazy warm weather.  Temperatures were in the 80s for over a week.  Perfect for staying relatively warm fishing on the freezing cold Keuka, Cayuga, and Lake Ontario.

I have been able to get out 5 times this month with close friends and family.  Our first trip was on our 24' Grady White fishing for perch on Keuka Lake.  As this blog has shown we have had banner outings early April on this lake for perch.....like keeping 50 over 12" per group outing....historically.  Well Keuka is a different lake to day than days of ole.  It is well documented about the challenges of this lake with struggling alewives populations and unsuccessful (so far) reintroduction of ciscoes to the lake.  We fished 8 hours....Branchport, the fork, and Hammondsport.  Not only did we not get a perch bite, but we never even saw a perch or minnow in the crystal clear water.  In years past you could see large clouds of minnows and schools of perch.  We inadvertently caught three small lake trout.  Fun to catch on a perch rig, but not very big.  When I cleaned them I found nothing in their stomachs.

Fortunately the next four outings were extremely successful.  Trip number 2 saw us on Cayuga Lake fishing for perch.  As is typical this time of year there were a PILE of boats all bunched up around two spots on the north end of the lake.  They were crushing dinks but we fish for the 12"+ perch so we actively looked for such fish.  We found them in 20' of water, while the masses were all fishing 10-14'.  Interesting observation that perch minnows were found in the perch we cleaned.  I thought only pike were cannibalistic....who knew?!

Huge Cisco

Released Lake Trout

Third trip had us hunting brown trout on Lake Ontario.  April is the hot time to catch brown trout in shallow water.  We launched out of Charlotte and headed east about ten miles to get away from all the other boats.  While it was warm inshore, it was 42 degrees on the water.  We caught four brown trout, a small mouth bass, and a big cisco.  All the fish were gorging on minnows and gobies. 

We thought the cisco was actually a whitefish, but after referencing the internet we determined it to be a cisco.  The trout made for an incredible dinner.

The fourth trip saw Dave, Shu and I return to Cayuga Lake.  This time the fish were in 18 feet of water and we crushed em!  We got our bait from Daves Bait & Tackle near Auburn which is a favorite of ours.  This time I saved the carcasses of 12 perch to make fish broth from and then used the broth to make Caldo de pescado.

In the perch bellies

Yesterday we traveled to Hamlin NY to fish for trout on Lake Ontario west of Rochester.  This time Jessica joined Dave and I.  First trolling line set out hooked a king salmon in the first 5 minutes and in 10 feet of water.  We ended up keeping this king and two brown trout.

Jessica with a king salmon and brown trout

Irondequoit Bay Trip

male & female hooded megansers

The weather this spring has been awful for fishing.  It is April 29 and snowing outside.  YUCK!!  Last Friday I took a vacation day to see Jake who was home on leave from the USAF.  He is stationed in Oklahoma at Vance Air Force Base.  We debated with our friend Dave about whether or not to go fishing as the wind was 20 mph out of the northwest.  I convinced Dave to give Irondequoit Bay a try as I thought we could duck around one of the bays.

We stopped at Mitchels Bait and Tackle to get our minnows.  Great bait store.  They sell the minnows by the pound.  We got a half pound of fatheads and Niagara shiners.  I always get solid minnows from this store.

Once in the water we noticed an unusual amount of seagulls and turkey vultures.  We got to the bay and out of the wind.  There was dead fish all over the place which was why all the birds were around.  They were gizzard shad.  I had got a notice from the DEC that they kill off was caused by both VHS disease and unusually cold March.  We did enjoy watching a pair of male and female hooded mergansers diving and eating minnows.  Very pretty birds.

Dave caught a 5 pound small mouth bass, but that was it.  We had lightweight rigs and were hoping for perch.  After an hour we decided to go out into the bay and fish by a channel marker.  It was pretty windy and cold out there.  I cast my minnow and watched the line go out.   I watched the line going out anticipating it stopping as soon as the weight was on the bottom.  Well the line never stopped and I knew it was only 50' deep so I flipped the bail and set the hook.....at first I thought it was a snag, but then the snag moved!  My drag immediately went off with the big fish spooling me.  I could not imagine what the fish was, think possibly a sturgeon because it was screaming the line off my spool.  We chased it and after 15 minutes it finally surfaced and it was a brown trout.  The best part was I was using an ultralight rod with 2 pound test line so it was like hauling in a horse.  Jake manned the net and we landed a 23 pound brown trout.  Jake did a great job of successfully releasing it too.

Today Johnny-boy and I melted some lead and poured 80 pencil weights.  This should get us through the summer.  Something fun to do in the garage by a hot pot belly stove while the snow flies.