Mike Longacre and Zach Longo headed to New York’s Chautauqua Lake last weekend, planning to work deep-diving crankbaits and jigs in the deep, clear water while practicing for the FLW College Fishing Northern Conference Tournament on the lake this weekend.

What they found made for a drastic change in plans.

“We found the fishing tough. A cold front had moved through and the locals said that shut the bite down,” said Longacre, of Perkasie, Pa., a junior at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Longacre said the lake is also feeling the effects of recent rains and a heavy blue-green algae bloom covers most of the lake.

“We caught about 10 fish a day, but only 10 to 12 pounds a day, mainly largemouths. We caught two smallmouths in some rocky areas, but all the largemouths came off docks.”

Longacre said he believes the rain will help push some of the offshore fish up on the bank and make the dock fishing a little better for the tournament. And he is hoping a little warmer weather will help, too.

“The highest temperature we saw was 70 degrees and that is pretty cold for August. It might warm up and a we are hoping for some sun to fire up that dock bite,” said Longacre, a junior aquatics and fisheries biology major.

In practice he and Longo, a senior environmental engineering major from Mohegan Lake, N.Y., fished offshore early, but once the sun came up they started flipping on the docks.

“With the water cold and dirty we figure the fish will pull up shallow. When it gets to about 10 o’clock in the morning we plan to go straight to the docks and stick with them the rest of the day,” he said.

“We were casting jigs and soft plastics as far beck under the docks as we could get. We really did not find a pattern as to what area of the docks the fish were on or what kind of docks they were on, but we did find they were relating to the shade from the docks.”

Longacre said the algae bloom, which covers the lake every August, should help the shallow water bite, also.

“The fish should be a little more comfortable sitting up shallow,” he said.

Longacre has fished two FLW College tournaments so far this year, finishing 3^rd at Smith Mountain Lake in May and 2nd on the Chesapeake Bay in July. He and Longo are veterans of local club tournaments in their home areas.

 

FLW College Fishing

Sat, Aug 23, 2014

Northern Chautauqua Lake

Long Point State Park

www.flwoutdoors.com