How To Improve Your Fishing/ Lake Reports
Honeoye Lake and Finger Lakes Fishing
Today I am going to give some instruction that will increase your catch ratio when you go angling alone or with a fishing guide. As a guide, I work very hard to find fish that customers can catch, and it bothers me when a day of fishing does not meet the expectations that I wanted. Here are some things that you, as a client, can do to help make the day a huge success.
When you fish out of my boat, it will be with artificial baits made of plastic. You will be using a wacky rig, a Texas rig or possibly a dropshot. None of these methods require a PHD to use properly and effectively, but some practice on your part will pay huge dividends.
A trip to your local sporting goods store is the first step. Purchase a practice plug and tie it to your fishing pole. Spend about 15 minutes per day out in the back yard practicing your casting, flipping, and pitching. You will generally not have to cast over 30 feet, but accuracy is the game changer. By doing this, on the appointed day, when I say cast to that weed edge, or flip in that pocket, or pitch to that clump of weeds, you will have developed a fair amount of ability and your catch ratio will be higher.
This is the computer age, and if you do not know what flipping and pitching methods are, spend the time to copy instructions from the internet. If you have practiced at home, we can refine and polish the presentation of your bait while fishing. I find it almost impossible to teach two to three people even the basics of these methods in a five hour fishing trip. Fishing is similar to anything else in life, the more you work at it the better you get.
Now for the fishing report. Canandaigua Lake produced some nice largemouth bass at the south end on recent guide trips. We used wacky rigged Zoom Trick worms with a weighted hook. Bass were caught from 8 to 20 feet of water.
Conesus Lake has been producing some nice bags of largemouth bass using wacky rigs, Texas rigs and tubes. The wacky and Texas rigs had Zoom plastics and the tubes were Bass Pro Tender Tubes. We used trick worms, shaky head worms and baby brush hogs.
Honeoye Lake has been good to the folks fishing with me. As usual some days are better than others and the skill level of the anglers has a definite relationship to their success. There are days when an afternoon trip is better than a day trip. High bluebird skies seem to slow the fishing, but if you can fish the heavier weeds, you can expect more bites. Several trips the past two weeks have produced 12 to 30 bass per trip. Wacky rigs have worked in the cleaner water and when we have to dig in the weeds, I switch to Texas rigged baby brush hogs. The baits used were all manufactured by Zoom. Again, no, I am not sponsored by Zoom!
Good fishing, wear your life vest, and maintain a proper lookout.
Frank