Posts Tagged weeds
Memorial Day Weekend
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Cancilla's Fishing Blog on June 2, 2010
Memorial Day weekend is typically about picnics and getting together with friends and family for me. This year was no different with the exception that I fish a bass tournament at Pymatuning Lake. West Penn Bass Hunters and I went out of Manning Launch at 6:00 am and weighed in at 2:00 pm. It was a good thing we fished the earlier time slot because it was almost unbareable during the last hour. The weather was sunny hot and very little wind.
I started my morning by fishing a roadbed in about 10 feet of water. With the water temperature nearing 80 degrees I felt that the fish would be retreating for deeper water. I proved myself wrong in the first couple hours. I spent nearly 1 hour fishing deep and only caught 1 bass. Then I decided to head to Tuttle Bay and throw some buzzbaits. I left having caught 7 bass and probably had near 7lbs of fish with our 3 fish limit. Around 9:30 I decided to run south and try the other end of the lake.
When I got to my weedbed in the south I quickly notice that the water temperature was 3 degrees color and the water clearity nearly reached 6 feet. In my first 10 casts I caught 2 nice bass, one was on a white buzzbait and the other was a creature bait. Being able to see into the weeds gave me a huge advantage. Mainly because I discovered that the bass were spawning all over the weed flat. Quickly, I switched to finesse gear and proceded to catch bass after bass off of the beds. Boat traffic started to kill my bite around 12:00 so I moved to the drop off and caught several more fish. Although I didn’t managed to catch any more good ones it was still fun. I cannot give you a definate best lure to use, but I managed to catch fish on senkos, buzzbaits, frogs, swimbaits, chatterbaits, creature baits and beavers. Once thing was for certain the fish were only willing to hit finesse baits on the beds but there were plenty of feeding bass to catch in between the beds.
I ended up winning the tournament with a 3 fish limit that weighed 8.66lbs. My limit was anchor by 2 fish around the 3lb mark and lunker of the tournament. Looking back I believe the move to the south was the correct move to make because everyone else fish the north end of the lake.
The next morning I took a couple friends, Nick and Steve Black, out for a couple hours to see if I could show Nick spawning bass. We were a little disappointed because the wind was blow enough to eliminate sight fishing, but we were still able to catch around 20 bass on buzzbaits and finesse gear. Steve had hooked into one bass that I believe was 5lbs. Overall it was a great morning on the water and I look forward to my next trip with those guys.
Practice Doesn’t Always make Prefect
Posted by Jon Parker in Parker's Fishing Blog on August 24, 2009
This weekend was a mixed bag of fishing for me to say the least. My buddy and I were signed up to fish the Mcfeely Tournament at Lake Arthur on Sunday, which is a great tournament for a worthy cause, put on by the guys at Consumer Direct Sports Supplies every year. I had been getting a few nice fish out of the weeds just about every trip out there this year, but it had been less consistent as of late. I wanted to go practice the day before the tournament to check some spots and try to find some more spots to make sure I was on fish. I told myself going in I was going to stick one fish in each spot I hit just to make sure they were the quality of fish I was looking for.
5lb 13 oz Lake Arthur Largemouth
The morning started off better then I could have hoped for. I punched my black and blue Picasso jig with 65lb braid into the first patch of weeds I came to and bang, a nice 4lb largemouth. So I left and went to my next stop. On the first cast, I got a small keeper. I left that spot and went punching pads in th next area I wanted to fish and got a nice mid 40’s musky. The first of three musky I had hit in Bear Run that day, other two got off. I did have to give her my jig because I couldn’t even see it in her craw and I didn’t want to killer her trying to remove it. I didn’t get any bass in the pad so I made a run down the lake to check some other holes I hadn’t fished yet this year. At my next stop I punched into some weeds and pulled up a nice 5lb 13 oz largemouth. (Sorry for the bad picture all we had was a cell phone to take the picture.) After that I thought I was going to be in great shape going into the tournament the next day.
Well sorry to say my buddy and I never got a keeper during the tournament. I’m not sure if it was the weather difference that changed everything or what. Saturday was sunny and nice and Sunday was overcast and cold. We did catch some fish but never got a good one. We did, however, have another musky attack but it didn’t hook up. On that note, if anyone is looking for musky, Lake Arthur seems to be really picking up right now.
What can you do? Sometime you get the bass and sometimes the bass get you. What else can you say? I think of it this way, it better to have caught some fish on Saturday and had a good day of fishing then to have never caught them at all.
SENECA LAKE
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Cancilla's Fishing Blog on August 12, 2009
This past weekend Jon and I went to Seneca Lake to fish the second event in the Bassmaster Weekend Series, New York West Divison. Neither of us had ever seen the lake before, so we decided to head up and practice both Thursday and Friday. The tournament was held on Saturday.
Thursday we decided that driving around a lot would be beneficial, so that we could look for high percentage areas and get the lay of the lake. What we found was that the entire lake looked and acted exactly the same. The first 10 yards off shore typically didn’t have any weeds, and the depth was around 2 feet deep. For that lake it was extremely shallow. The next 50 to 100 yards off shore was thick weeds that would come up to the surface or within a couple feet of the surface. At the weed line typically you would have about 10-20 feet where there were only weeds near the bottom and then a sharp ledge would drop you as deep as 150 feet. Seneca Lake is very deep and the average depth is 290 feet. The deepest part of the lake that we crossed was 532 feet, but the deepest part that has been recorded is 691 feet. The water clearity was incredible as well. Depending on the wind, weeds, and cloud cover we were able to see as deep as 15-20 feet. The water temperature on the main lake varied from 68-70 degrees. We only had a couple hits on Thursday and the 2 fish that we caught were dinks.
Friday we decided to really work the water that was in the 20 feet range. We jumped around after working each area for 20-30 minutes. We came up on one point, which I decided was a community hole after I saw boat pulling up and fishing constantly. We sat there for a while because we were getting smallmouth to hit and follow, but the only fish we could hook up with were dinks. Some of the followers were really nice fish though. Until 1:00 we jumped small point to small point looking for more smallmouth, but we had no success. With my practice time getting narrower I decided to try to find some largemouth, which I am more comfortable catching. Riding up the West side of the lake I noticed a shoreline that looked similar to Pymatuning Lake because it had a bunch of bushes and a few docks. I pulled into the area and realized that there was about 2 feet of water under the bushes. For largemouth that is more than enough. I throw a senko right to the front of the bush and while I was moving in I got my first keeper of the trip. I nice 2lber. I didn’t bother fishing that area anymore and drove a couple hundred yards up the shoreline and cast at another bush and caught a 2.5lber. I had my pattern for the next day. To be on the safe side we decided to head up in the canal to take a look around and found more bait there than on the main lake. We also found more fisherman in there than the main lake, so I ruled out fishing in the canal. The water temperature in the canal was 72 degree and crystal clear water.
The tournament would start off very slow for me. I figured that the fish would be active early so I power fished the shoreline of bushes without any success. Then I threw at some and flipped some of the bushes. Once again no luck. After a couple of hours we decided to go try to catch a couple of those smallmouth I had chasing my lures. After 45 minutes and no followers and no hits I decided that I wasn’t going to get my fish there and headed back to my largemouth. On the way back I decided to fish a marina, which is legal in New York, that I hadn’t been able to hit because there were always boats there fishing. I pulled in made about 10 casts and I caught my first keeper of the day. We fished the rest of the marina and was unable to get anymore fish. Then we headed back to the only shoreline that had produced a keeper in the practice. I pulled into the biggest dock that I had every seen and caught my second keeper and lost one. It wrapped me around a boat and broke my line. We started up the shoreline and hit a couple bushes and I caught my lunker 3.67lbs. Now with 3 keepers I was feeling pretty good, but my time was running out. After fishing a mile of shoreline and getting nothing else I ran back to the big dock around 1:00. I made my first cast and caught my 4th keeper. After 10 minutes I caught my 5th keeper. My rider than my 5 cast to the same spot and caught his limit of 3 keepers. Those were the last fish that we caught.
For my first trip to Seneca Lake I caught a limit of 5 largemouth bass that weight 9.84lbs. That was good enough to finish in 5th place. My rider had a limit of 3 bass that weighed 5.25lbs and he finished in 6th place. I would like to say that I really enjoyed the tournament and that the ABA staff does a fantastic job running the events. I would like to mention that we made some good friends with a great group of guys and girls. We had met them at Chautauqua and have treated us like we had know each other our entire lives. If anyone is heading up to the finger lakes and want any more information send me an email. There are very few bodies of water that compare to those lakes in Pennsylvania.
Post Spawn Blues
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Cancilla's Fishing Blog on June 16, 2009
To me the toughest time of year to fish is the post spawn. It doesn’t mean that you can’t get fish to eat, but they may be difficult to hook or get hooked up well, land, and find. Sometimes as anglers we are doing nothing wrong and we can’t seem to have any success. This was how my entire weekend went.
I believe that the fish in Western Pennsylvania have moved into the post spawn time of year. That is not to say that you can’t find a few bass still on beds. You can and will still find some bedding bass. However, the majority of the females have left the beds for the males to guard.
Saturday, I headed up to Wilhelm with my dad trying to find some of the true giant largemouth bass that swim those waters. Unfortunately, the fish were in post spawn meaning that they were going to be very inactive. We landed about 8 bass, but nothing was over 3lbs. I was able to hook up with 2 good fish that came off. Both fish ate the jig to the point where they were swimming with it. I nailed them with a good hook set and both fish (one around 4lbs and the other pushing 6lbs) managed to shake the hook on the way in.
Sunday my wife and myself met my parents at Shenago Lake for a picnic and some fishing. The day went very much like Wilhelm the day before. I managed to catch 9 bass, but only one smallmouth would keep and it was the first fish I caught. I hooked up with 9 more bass that came off, and missed about 5 fish to short strikes.
Fishing the post spawn can be very frustrating, but once you get on the fish you can catch alot of them in one area.
Memorial Day Weekend
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Cancilla's Fishing Blog on May 26, 2009
This year memorial day weekend was a truly special weekend for me. Not only because I spent an amazing weekend at Chautauqua Lake in New York, but because it was my 1 year aniversery with my wife Jessica. About 2 months ago I had asked Jess what she wanted to do for our aniversery and she told me she wanted to go somewhere and camp that we had never been to. Since I am fishing the bassmaster weekend series this year in New York we decided that we should go spend a weekend at one of those lakes. What guy gets to spend his entire aniversery weekend on the water. The kind that marries someone that loves the outdoors as much as him.
It didn’t take us long to find some nice fish morning on saturday. Since we had never been to the lake we decided to just use the trolling moto
r in the morning and try to find some kind of pattern. What we had discovered was there there really was no pattern. We caught fish in the prespawn, spawn, and post spawn cycles. If you were going to target the spawning fish the only time your were truly able to do so was before 11 am. The boat traffic was at a minimum, and the sun was perfect for help you see the fish. Typically in the middle of the day we were hanging out at the campsite, but we would head back out for the evening and fish for post spawn fish with jerkbaits, soft and hard, and chatterbaits. Dock fishing did work, but after saturday it was harder to get fish off of the docks because of the boats coming in and out of them.
Monday morning was the best day for me out there. Obviously it should have been because I had never been to the lake before this weekend, but my expectation were low because of the fishing and boating pr
essure of a holiday weekend. I decided to start fishing by running to a spot that I had located a couple of spawning smallmouth bass. The night before I had seen about 3 or 4 nice smallmouth bass on a stretch of water and when I went back the next morning, there were about 30 nice smallies on beds. You could say that I had hit the jackpot. I spent all morning working these fish and managed 11 nice smallies and 3 of them broke the 4lb mark and most were over 3lbs. I lost about 5 more of these monsters, but that is bed fishing for you.
My recommendations for Chautauqua is that everyone should go there at some point in their life. It is a beautiful lake and everyone up there is happy and very nice. The fish are big and the water is awesome. The boat traffic can be overwelming, but don’t let that discourage you. I would try fishing green pumpkin lures and baitfish colored lures. Hard and soft jerkbaits worked well matching the shad color. Long casts are extremely important in the super clear water.
Overall it was a great weekend and I can’t wait to get back.
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