Honeoye, Conesus, & Cayuga Lakes
If you haven’t read my last post, please take the time to read it and put the wheels in motion to improve your angling adventures. You will be surprised how much better your outings will be, if you just spend a little time practicing. Now for the fishing reports.
Honeoye is being a little stingy right now with her bass. The water is stained from an algae bloom and at times the bass are having trouble locating your bait. We are still using wacky rigs with dark colored Zoom Trick worms and Texas rigged Zoom Baby Brush Hogs. When using the worm, give it plenty of time to sink and then make short horizontal pulls of a foot or less. If you are using the creature bait, let it sink to the bottom and shake your rod tip, but do not move the bait, keep it in place. This will send out vibrations that the bass can feel and they will come to the bait. If you feel a light tap or pressure set the hook hard and bring the bass up toward the surface, otherwise you will lose most fish that get into the weeds.
Conesus is very good right now with bass biting in all areas of the lake. On our last visit, we mainly fished the south end using wacky rigged Zoom Trick Worms and Zoom Shaky Head Worms. Bass were on the weed edge and you had to be exactly on the edge with your presentation. Later in the day we flipped the weeds farther north and culled several times. We used Zoom Baby Brush Hogs which we modified. Never be afraid to experiment with your baits. Just showing the bass a little different bait can bring good results.
We had not been to Cayuga in quite some time and the lake was pretty rough first thing in the morning. A quick trip to the island produced nothing, so I moved south to an area we had caught bass in the past. Using a Stanley spinnerbait, I started catching some bass. It was a mix of keeper fish and shorts. In late morning, I switched to a ZMan chatter bait and caught several nice bass which allowed me to do some culling. I made another trip to the island with no results, so I went to the west side of Cayuga Lake and started flipping a Zoom Brush Hog which brought a 3.60 into the boat. By that time I had to return for the weigh in, but if I had gone west earlier, I could have caught more big fish. The bite was slow, but I caught 15 bass, several pike, a perch and a rockie.
Be safe, wear your life vest, and maintain a proper lookout.