Cazenovia Otsego Lake

[Broadhorizons]

We trailered down to Otsego Lake on Sunday. Beautiful lake and not very developed at all other than Cooperstown. We ended up boating 11 lakers up to 6 pounds. Lost a couple before they were seen. Most fish came from 40 to 50 down over 70 to 150 fow. Riggers, divers, and slide divers all took fish. Baits were spoons, dodger/peanut flies, and spinny flies. When the fishing slowed, I remembered an old post about spinny/flies for lakers. Ray K suggested "use green and green and if that doesn't work use green and green", so down it went to 70' over 75' and took the biggest fish of the day. No salmon or browns. Here's a pic of my buddy who was home on leave before being deployed to the Middle East again for the next year. This is the largest fish he's ever caught, 27", 6#. Now for my complaint. We saw a boat paddling themselves in and agreed we would make one more pass through our waypoint and then pull lines and help them in. DEC ended up helping tow them in before we got to them. When we were approaching the docks at the launch, I was going to pull up to the left dock on the outside as the other two boats, disabled vessel and DEC were on the right dock inside. As I neared the dock, about 25 feet from the end, DEC reverse motors right infront of me cutting me off and never looked back. I had to hard reverse to avoid the collision and ended up catching the snow fence on the marina/motel/private docks with 2 poles, breaking one pole, scraping up the other and breaking the tops of 4 slats of the fence. DEC never looked when backing up and nobody ever tried to wave me off. Pissed off, we motored back to the lake and waited for the launch to clear. And wait...and wait... still floating around....45 minutes later, DEC comes out and warns us that the property owner wants us to pay for the fence or she'll file small claims court. To avoid the hassles, we paid the $50 for the 4 broken peices. The village launch attendant said that she is constantly watching for people to break the fence and hit them up for money. Just a sour ending to a good day fishing. FYI The only pain for launching down there was that you had to drive down the block to park in the DEC lot and could not park the truck and trailer together, you had to park the trailer and unhook and park the truck. The DEC launch is gravel and shallow so you have to use the Village launch which is paved and deep. We launched at 4:30 am but If you show up after 5 am, they say they will inspect your boat and trailer for invasives and may require a boat wash before you launch. $10 for the launch and $10 for the wash at the DPW garage. The attendant on duty that day was a very large man and I suspect that the inspections are more of a drive-by inspection.

[Justin]

I guess we will stay away from there. Some people are just ignorant. Nice fish thuogh

[slimjim]

Nice fish... I was thinking of going down there, but decided it was too much trouble to launch at the village launch, as you described. One person I know in Cooperstown said there was a launch at the State park??? Don't know where that is thoigh.

[Broadhorizons]

If the state park you heard about is Glimmerglass, there's only a cartop launch, not a ramp. I wouldn't let it discourage me from going back, we can encounter jerks anywhere we go. They try to treat this lake like Skaneateles was..."this is our lake" or Cazenovia. I find that all the more reason to go there. And the State stocks it also so why not get some of my taxes back. They tried to keep the lake locked up to keep the invasives out but they found zebras in it this past winter anyway.

As far as parking, you pull the truck and trailer to the stop sign, turn right, go down 2 houses and turn right into the parking lot. You probably have to drive a half mile but it's only a 100 to 150 yard walk back to the launch, you cut across the lawn at the motel. If you get there before the rec boaters, you'll have parking, otherwise there's Doubleday field parking or street parking but this is more of a walk.

[dcso]

hui, where abouts on the lake were you fishing? i usually fish otsego as it closest but parking is a pain sometimes

thanks

ted

[Broadhorizons]

We took a bunch of hits in 70-85 fow North troll along the east shore in front of the stone lighthouse. We also took hits on the north end where the Glimmerglass Queen turns around to go back to Cooperstown (~140 fow). We didn't really mark much on the screen. Surface speed was 2.2 most of the day. There was 2 guys packing up on Saturday night late that had a nice box of walleye from the SW corner in about 15 fow on harnesses.