Showing posts with label crappie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crappie. Show all posts

Friday, April 16, 2021

Couple of Good Days on Cayuga

Nice perch Jess!
 Last week I got to spend two days on Cayuga Lake with Dave, Jessica, and Jake.  We launched out of Dean's Cove and fished primarily in that area.  Near the large dead tree on the west shore were the usual 500 boats sitting on an acre of water perch fishing.  I can't stand fishing in tight quarters, especially on a big lake.  We stayed away and brought home 38 perch over 12 inches.  Jessica caught a gigantic perch!  The next day we caught 9 beautiful lake trout in 2 hours.  We caught them jigging in 156 feet of water where we had located a large bait ball of alewives.  I know they were alewives as when I cleaned the fish there were literally 15-20 alewives in each of their stomachs.  

Team Effort
The quality of the lake trout are immensely better in Cayuga Lake than Keuka Lake.  I am sure the demise of the alewives population on Keuka Lake is to blame.  I have only ever found ONE alewive in a Keuka Lake Trout.  I usually find perch minnows or shiners.


We ventured up to the mud lock area looking for crappie, but at 50 degrees the water temperature was still too cold for them.

Jigged up a nice trout






Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Love fall...crappie, perch, bow hunting and Argentine Chorizo



Venison Argentine Chorizo sausage
The fall season is well underway.  A couple of weekends ago, after splitting a lot of shag-bark hickory, Dave brought over his freshly packed venison Argentine Chorizo.  It was absolutely incredible.  I had never had anything like it.  John, Mark, Bill, Scott, Jessica and Tracy all enjoyed the food and company.

We have been pulling and resetting tree stands.   On the Suor property we took down a great stand that overlooked the infamous "mines of Moria".  The "mines" have been clearcut and leveled by a new owner.  We also took down the tall stand on the Quaker Meeting House side of the property.   Out in Bloomfield Tieg, Jessica, Hannah and Jake took down the stand by Charlie's and moved it east.  Great two person stand for gun hunting.

Last weekend was absolutely beautiful, a true Indian summer weekend.  With Hannah in school, Jessica in the Adks, Jake at Penn State and Tracy doing report cards I spent the weekend with Dave fishing.  On Saturday we went to Irondequiot Bay looking for perch.  We debated about going to the canal between Cayuga and Seneca lakes but neither of us had been on the bay for a couple of years.  It proved to be a good day.  WE tucked away in a bay and caught a pile of perch with some nice large mouth bass thrown in too.  We ended up leaving with 33 perch over 12 inches.  We probably threw back another 50 dinks.  There were lots of bait fish in the bay.  We caught these perch, surprisingly, 6-10' feet off shore.

Bow hunting with Jessica, Jake and Cole...and splitting wood
Sunday was a "change your life" kind of day.  I have great memories of fishing for crappie on Chautauqua Lake and Honeoye Lake in the spring for crappie.  But for some reason I had it in my head that crappie could only be caught during a very short window of time in the spring.  Well when Dave told me that he had connected with an "old timer" who crushes the crappie in the fall, named John, and that John was going to give us a lesson on Canandaigua Lake....my reply was, yeah, and the best time to hunt whitetail is in May....no one catches crappie in the fall.
Canandaigua Lake perch & crappie

Irondequiot Bay catch
So we go to the Naples boat launch where we are met by a young man named Dylan who worked with Cornell and was inspecting boats for invasive species.  Dylan worked the ramp all fall.  He told us of all the trout, salmon, perch and bass fisherman had been catching.  When I asked him how the crappie fishing had been and he replied that no one catches crappie in the fall to which I glared at Dave who shrugged me off.

Well John was indeed a great fisherman.  He took us to specific places on the lake using both live bait and jigs.  We caught crappie hand over fish.  My paradigm is changed and now I cannot wait to try this technique on Chautauqua and the Finger Lakes in the fall.  Crappie are GREAT to eat and they are a fun fish to catch.