Fishing Report 9/16-9/18

[StrikeKing]

Just got back from a long (slightly exhausting) weekend at BL. I'll do my best to try to remember everything.

Friday night we spent about 3 hours fishing for walleyes from 9pm-midnight and were unsuccessful. We were trolling stick baits and erie dearies.

Saturday we headed out around 6am. We fished the bay around Conger Island really hard for 3 hours, three of us in the boat, all using different lures/presentations. We caught some small largies on soft plastics and and shook off two really good ones then left. After that it was a mixed bag of areas we hit. We worked pins island and the bay behind it and managed a couple more small ones (saw a really nice 4 lber doing the death roll underwater...probably foul hooked by someone else in the bay). Then we decided to go out to the cluster of islands and work the drop offs around them. We caught several nice fish (3-3.5 range) out there on deep crankbaits in about 10-13 feet of water. While we were there our friends were down in the narrows and they were catching a lot of fish down deep as well on shaky head/drop shot, including a nice 4.5 largie. Was happy to see a lot of smallies after reading that people were having trouble locating them, but none of any real nice size (understand that I've been fishing Oneida and Erie a lot this summer, so I've gotten used to 4lb+ smallies, spoiled I guess).
Highlight of the day was getting into a school of Walleye on a drop off we found by accident while driving to a new place we found the last time we were there in the spring. Funny how that works sometimes. lol.
We quit at 3. Ate went to bed.

Sunday was miserable. Caught a few here and there on the top, on the bottom, cranking, worming, caught a nice northern (probably around 7 pounds) by the bridge. Overall it was an ok weekend, but not nearly the size or numbers we'd been used to seeing in the past. Everyone said the fishing had been AMAZING up until the beginning of last week, and that it appeared to shut off around Wed. Well, I don't know how amazing it was, but it did appear that the fish are keying in on a particular bait right now, and I would say that we had our best luck either in 3 feet or 15. More of them in 15, for sure.

Catch and release!

-J

[Ballz out Bassin]

Hey StrikeKing.
I just left Black Lake after fishing the weekend. It's was a total disappointment. I usually fish there in June and have great success, but I took a shot in this very early Fall and the fish had lock-jaw. The reason I'm writing you is that I love catching Smallies. I read your post and you said you fished Lake Oneida a lot and there were big smallies there. I've heard some good things about the lake, and I was wondering if you could give me some advise. I would like to set up a fishing trip and wanted to know when, where, and that sort of stuff. What's your opinion of the lake? Thanks for any information.