Syracuse.com - DEC: One of best years for fishing Lake Ontario in recent memory

[HuntingNY-News]

In addition to good catches of coho salmon and brown trout, anglers are catching lake trout in areas you normally wouldn’t expect to catch them, in regard to water depth and location.

Submitted photoMichael Juskow, of Cicero, caught this feisty, 28-pound, chinook salmon on Lake Ontario while fishing recently out of Fair Haven on his son's boat. The 43-inch fish hit a white Echip with a white fly on a dipsy diver in 120 feet of water, he said. He said on the initial hit the salmon took out nearly 500 feet of line and that it took nearly a half hour to land.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating.

The fishing this year on Lake Ontario has been off the charts. The recently released preliminary results from the spring Lake Ontario Fishing Boat Survey conducted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation confirms what charter boat captains keep telling me.

The “catch rate” for trout and salmon (5.3 fish per boat trip) between the period of April 15 and May 31 of this year was “the highest observed in the 28-year data series,” according to the survey. The total harvest rate, which is the number of fish actually kept, was 2.4 fish per boat trip — also the highest observed, the report said.

The list of the three most commonly caught species this spring was led by brown trout, followed by chinook salmon and lake trout, said Jana Lantry, an aquatic biologist with the DEC.

"Every year, brown trout are relatively common in angler harvests in the springtime,” she said. “This spring, though, the April catches of chinook salmon were great. That’s unusual. We don’t know why. It could be the warm water temperature. It also appears that there’s two very good age classes of chinook salmon (2 and 3 years old) in the lake this year and that could be playing a part.”

Lantry said the good lake trout catch could be getting influenced by the different strains that have been stocked in recent years, thanks to a cooperative effort by the DEC and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

’’The anglers are catching them (the lakers) in areas you normally wouldn’t expect to catch them, in regard to water depth and location,” she said.

The survey involves DEC staff in boats interviewing anglers as they come off the lake. They cover an area stretching from Fort Niagara to Henderson Harbor, which is about some 200 miles of the New York state shoreline, Lantry said.

“It’s just been fabulous fishing so far this year,” she said.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog