Lake Oneida Chittenango Lions Club Walleye Derby 5/1 - 5/2
Posted: Wed May 26, 2021 12:24 pm
Fished Lake Oneida for my first time with my fish partner John Anderson and his daughter Aubry aboard his fishing vessel Controlled Chaos a couple weeks back, figured I'd throw a report up since we haven't been on Champlain since March. Arrived the night before to prep,register, mill around a few tackle shops and rest up after a 4 hour haul for our first Race of the year. Hit the lake around 5:30 the next morning and it was on. Hit the Oneida river first to check a few spots with only freshwater drum to show, no pics! Decided to hit the main lake soak some sticks on boards. Good call the action pretty much started immediately, started stacking fish in the box until the boat traffic picked up and pushed the fish out of the bay. Had a couple 19"ers in the box around noon so we decided to check them in and have lunch. Might mention the format of this derby is single longest individual fish with 25 paid places. At measure station top 25 were already in the 20" range back out to soak some more. Finished day 1 around 8 pm with 3, 3 fish limits nothing over 21", great day on the water to say the least. Day 2 decided fishing was good so we hit the lake well rested around 7 and jumped rite back on our bite from day 1, which we had found they were in a "jointed" mood you might say. Not today, switched back over to straight baits and game on again. Mid morning John picked up a 22"+ fatty which we ran in and it put him in the top 10, very tight race on this lake with tons of cookie cutters. Hammerd down thru some perfect overcast choppy conditions to fill another 3 limits and that was that. John eventually got bumped to 25th but hey, out of 2000 not bad in our book we just never got that TARGET bite. Hands down what an adventure! Great times, food and company... and yes when you see 6 Black Hawks in formation stand up.