Ever fish Lake George N.Y. ?

[JamesT]

Going to be at L.G. for a week in a week. Will be staying on west side at silver bay (ymca camp). Seems like the main species are lake trout, salmon, smallies, northerns. Any tips? I will have access to a motor boat, pontoon boat, and yak.

Thanks!

[meat]

Fished off docks and a rowboat as a kid in the 1970's. Caught decent yellow perch by day and catfish by night using worms. Good Luck!

[NewbreedFishing]

Off shore bass fishing is where it's at after summer kicks in.
Have a big arsonnel of weedless baits (buzz/spinnerbaits, frogs, jigs, swimbaits)

Dig up some of the old bassmaster tourney info on the net. most of the big tourneys held there happened from June-Sept.

Would like to revisit this lake again before i die. Endless opertunities.

[JamesT]

Thanks! Heading out Fri. Morning. Would love to catch a 4+ smallie (better yet 5+) and northerns. Of course id also love to get a trout or salmon but that seems like you need to know what you're doing lol.

[NewbreedFishing]

I was up there in July 05

Fish the deeper weeds that form offshore and have a suspending jerkbait (kvd strike king wild shiner) blue ghost/olive ghost/chartruese and purple tied to some 10-12lb florocarbon at all times!! I recommend upsizing hooks on jerkbaits to 4X when fighting fish long distances. We also did well burning black and orange and all chartruese Reed Runner spinner baits over top dense weeds and other large flashy willow bladed models to work the tops of deeper weeds for pike and bass. Large White Flukes with soft nail inserts/heavy wire hooks, Black Buzzbaits, ScumFrogs and Manns Ghost were also good.

You need large spools filled to the brim with line(floro/braid) allowing u to launch lures 40-50 yards with little stretch on a long distance hoook set.

[JamesT]

Teeheehee

Just fished for a couple hours. 2.5 largie, 13"smallie and largie. Water is only 60 and thats in a shallow bay. Nothing like Clear water. Havent seen any weeds yet (kinda limited in where i can go, yak). They are caught in the transition bw shallow/deep off rocky points on sinking rap 11's. I'll be busting out the spoons later today.

I feel like a kid in a candy store...

This place is...sweeeeeeet!!!

WHEN i get one over 4, ill snap a pic.....

[JamesT]

I give up trying to find a decent topo of lake george on the internet so if you are curious you can google. It is in northeastern n.y. and on the north end at ticonderoga there is a river (mohawk?) that connects over to lake champlaign (sp?).

Fished L.G. a couple hours on July 1 then pretty hard From July2-6. License for out of state for a week is $35. The motor boat and pontoon didn't pan out, ended up fishing from yak. Stayed at Silver Bay which is a ymca camp (and bay) that has been around since 1903. Good to see there are still some things still around that are "old school". Doesn't seem like it has changed much and families have been going there yearly for generations. Lenny who ran the archery (I actually surprised myself, could fairly consistently get all 5 in the inner 3, usually 2 on the far target) learned to shoot there in 63 and has been instructing for like 40 years. His dad learned in like the 30s.

Yaks were available from 8:30-8 and other than archery and little shuffleboard I pretty much fished, sometimes all day more or less. They've got all kinds of activities including a lot of crafts, watercolor, metal working, pottery, basketweaving, etc, etc. Wasn't cheap but I would recommend silver bay. Stayed in some "very basic" cabins. Oh yeah, there is some serious, serious money on this lake and hacker craft wooden boats are made there (kinda like criss craft, start at over 300K I'm pretty sure).

Ok I'm getting carried away. The first day I cast, the rest of the time I trolled.

Oh yeah, I was not prepared at all. An unexpected week long conference came up the week before and I went out every night. I've got tons of lures in the basement of deep divers, but I grabbed 4 of the plano $5 tackle boxes (all central ohio river lures, I've got about 10 boxes and when I fish around here I just grab a couple, each has a variety so it really doesn't matter what I grab) and a pole about 5 minutes before my family left. L.G is 32 miles long, 4 miles wide and I think over 200 feet deep. Water is clear. And my earlier report saying temp of 60 was wrong. I think it was more like about 73 +/-.

I had about 6-7 cranks that were "deep divers". And not really super deep. I was fishing with some weird stuff like poes rc-3 and the other funky looking poes that goes maybe 6-8 feet. Didn't really seem to matter what I fished with, but deepest seemed better. My deepest diver was a shad rap 8 in I think the old silver blue color. It worked well. Saw zero surface weeds and submerged weeds were present but really not that abundant. Patches here and there. Fished seemed to be deeper so to make up for this I trolled with like 200 or more feet out of 8 lb test. I really wasn't prepared. Zero on topwater. Once there a very very small amount of topwater activity (like maybe 20-25 moderate nips, but hardly "busting". Couldnt get on buzzer. Also my camera battery died on like the 3rd day. I'm really not a picture person anyways took like 12 pictures total and only of 2 fish. Did get a pic of my biggest though. Luckily a man and his daughter were nearby and snapped a couple pics. Got 2-3 more just slightly smaller. Ended up with maybe 12 bw 2.25 and 3 or so. I lost a lot of fish with so much line out and mono 8 lb strecth, etc.

Will continue in another post case computer crashes.

[JamesT]

This is gonna be the most randomly organized report youve ever seen by the way.

The ymca had a topo and where we were I believe in the middle it was 140 feet deep. Fished maybe the 4 miles south of silver bay and 1.5 mile north. I trolled the whole time and had no idea what the depth was.

There are 6-8 guide services but I never saw a charter. Oh yeah the fishing pressure was like zero. I saw one dude in a triton 3 or 4 days and maybe one or two other fishing boats the whole time. And a few people "fumbling around". I couldn't believe it. Lake really wasn't too bad. Lots of tubers and let me tell you if you think alum is bad, lets just say these are new yorkers. Ever talk to a new yorker? They are in your face. Literally. So are the boaters. I really didn't care though I liked the waves.

I mostly trolled up and down. Usually staying 200-300, maybe 800 yards from shore. Only at the rip rap did I troll close to shore. Crazy as it sounds, I was catch nearly as many fish randomly trolling 500 yards from shore as I was 200. Heck I was catching fish in 140 feet of water trolling 8, maybe 10 feet deep. I couldn't believe it. And the action was steady but yeah there was the occasional slower times but slow meant maybe like 30 minutes without a fish. To be honest I may have caught 150 even 200 smallies. I dunno, all I wanted was a 4 lber or bigger. Rarely was the action slow. This is one incredible smallie fishery!!!! Lots of fish in the 10-13" range as well as many dinks. I could not believe the dinks I caught on the lures I was using. Even more so than ohio!

And other than smallies I got 2 largies (one about 2.5, 2 rockies, and one gill). Yes 98% of the fish I caught were smallies!! Freaking sweet. And good amount of launching in the air 2-3 feet (often losing them). Dont troll with 200 feet of 8 lb mono out lol. Lost 2 that based the the distance how big they looked and pull were probably 4+. They launched in the air and cya!

I think I'm about done. I pretty much covered a lot of water had no clue of depth or what I was doing, trolled maybe 8-12 feet down and caught smallies everywhere. I usually trolled parallel to west shore maybe 300-500 yards out and caught fish. And when I crossed over to the east side (and back) the 4 or 5 times I did I always caught smallies in like the middle in 60, 80, 140, maybe more feet of water. I had no idea, but it really didn't matter. Those things were cruising open water all over the place in the lake. Next time I go I'm confident I will get into some bigger smallies.

These pics were all in the first 3 days. My camera battery then died so no more pics. But luckily got pic of biggest (there are 2 pics). Caught maybe 4-5 in (2 of which were just smaller than largest)between size of the smaller smallie pic and the largest. And I crossed my face out bc I don't yet have a pic of me on the net that I know of and really dont want one.

Peace out and check out Lake George, its sweet. Other pic is of natural rip rap.

Oh yeah spoons worked only ok. Seemed like the deeper the crank the better. ALso did pretty good on rapala countdown 11. Now that I think about it, I dont know if I even fished a 3-5ish foot diving crank. I fished like the same 5-6 deepest diving cranks I had. Shad rap 9, poes rick clunn 3(old school), the other funky poes with the rounded lip-old school (now at alum somewhere), bagley deeper diving killer b2 (that was probably my most successful along with the shad rap 8 which is somewhere at lake george, oh yeah a deeper diving balsa b1 painted white with large gold glitter was sweet, maybe one or two others),

[JamesT]

oh yeah, just read earlier posts. During the week I saw maybe 30 dead floating perch. Any idea why?

also there may have been submerged weeds. No fish finder nor do I even know how to read them. I pretty much 99% river fish around here. Cant remember the last time I even used (with someone who had one)a finder in ohio. Maybe never.

A lot of the time I fished based on color of water looking down. Since the bottom seemed all sand, it changed from "sand color" to greenish to blueish to darkish as you got deeper. Often just tried to stay where it went from greenish to blueish. But like I said it didn't seem to matter and caught lots in darkish. Greenish didn't produce as well and since I occasionally picked up weeds tried to stay away from greenish.

[NewbreedFishing]

Sounds like an adventure...looks like you were at the south end of the lake. I stayed in Plattsburgh more then half way up the lakes west side.


the jerkbait would have been the ticket on those suspended fish. 8lb line @ over 100 yards out really put you at a disadvantage. no jumping smallie of decent size will make it back to your hand using that technique

[JamesT]

Gotcha. Now it makes sense why i was catching them all over, they were suspended. Next time ill have some deep diving pointer 100's and 128's if they make a dd 128. Or their other deeper suspenders (staycee?). Thanks. Silver bay is fairly north, 10 min drive to ticonderoga which is the north end of lake. Should have bought gear there but i didnt feel like spending money on stuff i already had sitting at home.