BenFishin

I shoot 300g powerbelt aerolites outta my tc encore with 2 white hot pellets. Crazy accurate, mushroom reliably, and those powerbelts load so easy! Anyways it was a great season for me, and a lot of fun keepin track of this thread! Happy holidays everybody!

Another amazing day on our family property in 8N. Good buddy got his first deer, and it was a doozy!

Yesss, i will have fond memories of my first deer forever. Congratulations to him! Cant wait to get my 3 week old daughter out here with me!

Beautiful opening day! My 8mm Mauser barked at about 7:30 this morning in 8N! He was in a line of bucks including two spikes and a decent 8 pointer who hung around and sniffed his dead buddy for a half hour after the shot! Super fun!

Sweet buck, love those brow tines, and nice post office bin lol

No need to downplay the size of a buck, its all relative and if you weren't excited about shooting it, then you wouldn't have shot it! Beautiful buck as far as I can see, will be interested to hear about what may have caused his baldness!

Congratulations on the beautiful buck and the addition to your family! I also hunt 8N in Honeoye! Been seeing more and more mature deer the past few years there. I think people are finally allowing spikes and forkies to walk so that we may all have an opportunity to arrow big mature bucks! Love it!

Thanks yeah he didnt make it far thats for sure!

On the topic of ozone scent eliminators, in lieu of the very very expensive scentcrusher system, i use the scentpurge 50 (link below) in a heavy duty sterilite bin and it works great for less than $50! http://www.eders.com/whitetailr-scentpurge-odor-eliminator-50.html?&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI35D43Jzh1gIVVQOGCh05zQ6FEAQYASABEgJ7aPD_BwE

Thanks for the heads up! Just entered!

Dad and I tagged out opening day of archery this year! Been watching both bucks all summer!

Thanks yeah we were both so excited and I have been on a missing streak in the past couple of years... bull elk, big 8 point, even bigger 8 point, and probably several others that i am forgetting. It is also special since my first child is due to be born very very soon so my time will be limited in the stand. Good to get the pressure off and just sit back and enjoy the ride! My parents may also be selling the property before next years season as well so its nice to get in another good final season there.

My dad and I both got lucky within the first hour of opening day on the family property in Honeoye NY, unit 8N. My first buck with a bow and one of my dad's largest archery bucks! Been watching his buck on our trail cams all summer, very cool to see it come together and lay hands on the one we have been drooling over!

Two matching sets and a few raghorn 3 points a few days ago before the snow!

Thanks guys for the help, will definitely do some more searching around too. Pretty new to the lake fishing game, a lot of this information is kind of cloudy and either difficult to find or just confusing for whatever other reason. Hopefully I can get onto some more species as I learn some of the different techniques!

As of recently we seem to have lakers dialed in fairly well, I'm wondering if there's something we are missing as far as getting into something silver. We fish mostly Cayuga and Skaneateles lakes and have a couple riggers, assorted leadcore, and planers as well... most of the time we fish the evenings but on weekends can manage early morning stuff. Any hints as far as rigging, prime locations, depths, temps etc would be very helpful! Heres a picture of the only Finger lakes Bow we have ever managed to pull, it was an accident but it was a beautiful accident!

Awesome thanks bigfoot and sk8man! Gonna hafta get some hooks and a sharpener and do some upgrades! It seems theres never an end to the gear... 🎣

Thanks for the advice! I think my hooks are pretty sharp, those spoons were brand new that day! But anyways I am probably going to replace as many hooks as i can with singles soon. Anyone have suggestions on brands or sizing? Also any suggestions on hook sharpening methods or how-tos? We had a bit of redemption on Thursday 7/8/15, went back to Skaneateles lake and trolled the same locations with the same spoons and went 5 for 5! I think maybe we were just not bringin em in fast enough, keeping pressure on them. Its tough with the weight of the leadcore line dragging. We got 5 lakers, 3 keepers and two shorts went back to the depths! Good day on the water when none of the hookups get off!

Sorry this was last week but still figured its better late than never! Last week my dad and I got out on Skinny and went 2 for 10! Lots of hookups that seemed to be very heavy fish, but all but two shook the hook a few seconds into the fight! Got some things to try next time we go out, but any advice on keeping fish on the hook while using a full leadcore would be appreciated. Anywho... we had fun trolling around just south of the state launch in about 50-70 ft of water on 7 and 9 color rigs and caught two smallish lakers, one 17 and one 19 inches. Then the lake calmed down a bit and we pulled the leadcore up and got into some awesome smallmouth action in the north end, all on surface poppers. What a riot!! The lakers seemed to like green and copper spoons, michigan scorpions.

Impressive haul for Hemlock!

Got our two man limit of lakers all on leadcore, all fish were taken in less than 50 ft of water on east side of lake, opposite Deans Cove. Ran boards and sticks, both flat and with 2 colors of lead, no takers up shallow. Fish split evenly between 7 color and 9 color cores. Two different spoons won the day. (See picture) Only went 6 for 10 (plus a pickerel) but I am blaming the lost fish at the boat on my forgetting the net at home *sorry about the sideways pics, they show up correctly everywhere but here...