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Outdoorsman

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About Outdoorsman

  • Birthday 08/02/1985

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    TheOutdoorsmanCU

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    Fishing/Hunting

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  1. Glad to hear that you got out and had a good day! We were out there as well on Sunday and found the same thing...a great day with a slow bite! Fish absolutely everywhere, but a lot of "lookers" and "teasers", but not so many of the more aggressive chasers. Slightly smaller on average, but some nice ones mixed in. A bit rough out there with the boat traffic down near Taughannock and AES!
  2. Otsego can be hit or miss, but it can be good if you hit it right. Bring along some jigging stuff. If you are marking fish on the bottom in 60-150 feet of water, jig for lake trout. We've had good success on Otego, along with Cayuga and Owasco while vertical jigging. I usually use a 1 ounce jighead tipped with a paddletail or fluke style plastic, and spoons such as crippled herrings and buckshot rattle spoons work well too. Basically, try to keep the boat still so that you are fishing vertical (if it is windy, it helps to have a drift sock or bucket, trolling motor, or just kick the big motor into gear now and then). Good enough electronics can show the jig drop, along with fish that are "chasing" it. What a blast when multiple lake trout are streaking toward a jig...if they don't hit it while jigging down there, crank it in almost as fast as you can reel and you will be surprised how many hit it on the way up (sometimes very close to the boat, even when the water is hot).
  3. One option would be to increase the strength of your tackle. Fight the fish faster and let it go sooner. I'm not sure what setup you use now, but maybe try to increase the strength of your leader or line and use fluorocarbon to minimize reductions in catch. Another would be to target them for a while, catch some to take home, and then target something else.
  4. Mature sea lamprey are pelagic predators/parasites (and are actually not eels). They latch onto fish that are suspended in the pelagic zone, so I would say that they have mistaken your downrigger balls for a fish. I'm not sure how long it takes for a lamprey to rasp through a fish skin, but it could probably take a while especially if latched onto a fish with large scales...so these are probably being patient, trying to get through. Why it is happening now, who knows? Maybe they are feeding more this time of year, or maybe the activity of the fish they are targeting brings those fish to your downrigger balls.
  5. Believe the lures you are running and the fish you are catching. Different lures run best at different speeds, and sometimes the fishes mood will dictate whether to go faster or slower. Make sure you run each lure boatside before you let them out. While fishing, I like to do a lot of s-turns...that slows one side down and speeds the other side up (especially with downriggers). If I get fish on a turn (or turning around as well), I know whether I should speed up or slow down. Once you get a pattern going, the GPS speed will do just fine. Like others have said, it depends on the direction you are going related to currents as well...since there are currents, even in lakes. It is far more pronounced where there are more currents though. The wheel is actually more accurate in places like the Hudson where I fish for stripers. The tides there are quite strong. Going with the current, I go much faster so that the lures will run (gps speed)...going against the current, sometimes I hardly make any headway (gps), even though the lures are running at a high speed. These are just a couple examples where the water wheel comes in handy because it shows water speed, even if it is not as precise as the gps speed. One problem with using a water wheel when fishing on the deep lakes is that the currents down deep may not be the same as the currents at the surface. If that is the case, neither the gps nor the wheel will be that accurate...you would just have to pick one and find the speed you are going that the fish like on that day.
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