At 17 miles in length and almost two wide with a maximum depth of 75 feet and average of 25, it offers most everything Erie does. That includes bass, yellow perch and walleye in abundance. Yes, as in Lake Erie-like abundance. And as a bonus, a serious muskie population.
The lake is flush with fish in the 18 to 24 inch range—and I found one.
Folks cover long stretches of highway and back roads and X-out irrecoverable vacation days on the calendar (and likely some sick days) to get their boats onto the deep waters of Lake Erie’s Eastern Basin, though it doesn’t always work out. Snafus can most often be blamed on weather forecasters, though like excuses for lost lunkers, they can be myriad. Sometimes it must simply be chalked up to the fishing gods which have lined up against you for all your earthly transgressions—and who hasn’t been there?
Fortunately, those higher natural powers are indeed merciful. That’s why they created Chautauqua Lake: A natural inland body just a hop and a skip from Erie, awaiting all those who won’t tempt fate on the big water during less-than-ideal conditions. In fact, after plying the waters of Chautauqua, anglers may never again run the additional 15 miles north. They may find the sixth Great Lake is the perfect spot to downsize.
Despite its close proximity to Erie, the glacier-created Chautauqua drains south, to the Allegheny watershed. The lake is spring-fed, with just a handful of smaller tributaries. At 17 miles in length and almost two wide with a maximum depth of 75 feet and average of 25, it offers most everything Erie does. That includes bass, yellow perch and walleye in abundance. Yes, as in Lake Erie-like abundance. And as a bonus, a serious muskie population. How serious? “There’s probably more fish here per acre than in any other lake in the U.S.,” said Larry Jones, whose been fishing the lake for years.
“There’s probably too many, really.” Too many? It seems impossible to conceive. Jones described the Chautauqua fish as barred in variety, as opposed to spotted. And he’s plucked plenty from the lake. The charter captain, who spends winter months guiding fly anglers for monster fish on the Rewa River deep in the Rupunini District of Guyana, said during a recent season on Chautauqua, he did okay.
“We caught 245 muskie in a single area the size of a football field that summer,” Jones said, though he didn’t exactly blurt out a precise location. (Hint: if you’re near Chautauqua Institution’s giant red brick bell tower you’re near the playing field.) Trolling in his faithful Targa Tracker, Jones keeps plenty of hardware aboard. Hundreds of big lures, boxes and bags everywhere. “You can’t have too many, really,” he chuckled. His trolling ranges as slow as 2.5 all the way up to 6 mph, depending on water temps. Running four straight rods, he switches lures as soon as it’s obvious they’re not producing big toothy critters.
“It depends on just about every possible factor,” he explained. “Light, temperature, weeds, the barometer.” And thus, our muskie fishing was doomed. A seriously cold front was sweeping through as we plied the lake’s choppy waters. No worries—more sick days in the future.
Frank Schoenacker knows the ins-and-outs of Chautauqua, too. He captains a big boat on Lake Erie out of Dunkirk and a small boat, a 21-foot Lund on Chautauqua. After working both lakes Ontario and Erie for some years, he decided to consolidate efforts, reducing mileage in an effort to concentrate on more catching fish and less driving.
“A lot of times we missed out on great fishing,” Schoenacker explained, “going back and forth.” That’s when he moved to strictly Erie and Chautauqua, importing salmon trolling experience from Ontario.
“I tend to use spoons. Some Warrior spoons, sometimes smaller Michigan Stingers, those little guys. But most often R&R spoons. They paint them up in the colors I want. But also some Rebels and Bay Rats.”
Schoenacker said since he doesn’t utilize a mate (his Chautauqua charters are limited to two passengers) he often shies away from worm harnesses. “I won’t use them when the fish are on.”
While trolling the open waters of the lake produces fish, so does trolling close to shore along weed lines. That’s when har-nesses can be especially effective, mostly during the early season. Super-slow, less than 1 mph with butterfly blades along the edges of the many beds.
Schoenacker considers the lake a perfect alternative to Erie during blows. While the lake can bust out with two footers and white caps during foul weather, there are still plenty of points, bays and inlets to get in some good fishing.
“Rather than sit on shore on Erie and watch the waves pounding, you can get out and jig. There’s always plenty of options available,” Schoenacker explained.
Mike Sperry also works the long, narrow lake full-throttle from ice out to late autumn.
“It starts with spring crappie trips,” the long-time captain explained. With a 25-fish limit, the lake offers great papermouth fishing. “There’s a lot of 12-inchers, though it might only be a two-week window.” Like all fishing, weather dictates. Hopefuls hang jigs under bobbers or pitch into weed beds. The lake has ample acreage with plenty of hungry residents tucked among the greenery in the nearshore shallows.
Don Stasczyk got us onto the fish, then helped clean a few.
But tossing around jigs, minnows and small spinners isn’t the only game in town for crappie, according to Sperry. “Sometimes we’ll troll.” Yes, trolling for crappie. Who’da thunk it? “We’ll creep along with an electric motor and super-small crankbaits and small trolling boards.”
But most of the time, Sperry said, he’ll anchor or drift over beds in four to eight feet. As soon as ice-out they head into canals and marinas to spawn, usually late April or early May. Water in the high 50’s to low 60’s is key crappie time.
While some lake residents, mostly recreational boaters, have serious grudges against the expansive weed beds, not every-one is anti-weed. “As fishermen on Chautauqua,” Sperry said, “we love the weeds.” After all, the weed beds of this lake are an all-season giver of fish.
While the lake produces big crappie, it also offers up walleye—big in both size and number.
Shore anglers can hit the lake at night with arsenals of stick baits. Unfortunately, public access is fairly limited, with just under three of its 41 miles of shoreline open, however there are seven public boat ramps on the lake. Just offshore, anglers troll Hot-n-Tots, Flicker Shads and other baits in eight to ten feet of water along the weed line. Once again, Chautauqua’s vegetation comes into play.
In addition to guiding folks to fish, Sperry also outfits them. He operates Chautauqua Reel Outdoors, an all-around bait shop and sporting goods store in Lake-wood, at the lake’s south end. And he sells plenty of maps.
“I carry a laminated fishing hot-spots map. It includes a lot of information, including weed beds, general info and some really good fishing stuff,” he explained. Sperry said he often finds himself customizing maps with a marker for anglers unfamiliar with the lake. “Yeah, if people ask me I’ll mark ‘em up, no extra charge.” Of course, what Sperry marks on the map depends on the season, weather and anglers.
Walleye five-pounds-plus are common, with plenty of 10-pound monsters on tap. But ‘eyes aren’t the only bigger fish Sperry chases. Like Jones and countless others, he also targets muskie. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation currently stocks more than 3,000 pounds of pure-strain muskellunge each year, raised at a hatchery on the lake. The nine-inch fish help bolster the already great popula-tion. And the stockings are really just icing on the cake: there’s a fully reproducing population.
Catch-and-release is a big part of the huge muskie numbers. “It’s really caught on in the past decade or so,” Sperry said. “People rarely keep a fish. In fact, it’s actually kind of frowned upon.”
Along that line, Sperry said he works to educate his charter customers on catch-and-release of the lake’s coveted top predator. Just because you release one doesn’t mean it will survive, he explained. He advocates larger nets and keeping fish in the water while unhooking, then keeping grip-and-grin sessions as short as possible before releasing.
Bass are a hot commodity, too, large and small.
“They’re pretty much everywhere, especially in the shallows and the weeds,” Sperry informed. Ah, the all-knowing weeds. Bass are taken by drop-shotting live baits and throwing small spinners and stick baits. During the summer, the go-to routine for bait is flipping Senkos and topwater baits.
Don Staszcyk’s worked the waters of Chautuaqua a little bit—okay, a lot. His first real fishing gig came courtesy of Uncle Sam out west. No, really. He was in the Air Force at the time.
“I was working for the newspaper, and they gave me a boat and a newspaper photographer and sent me on my way once a week. It was pretty neat,” he said. “I guess that’s the way competitive fishing started for me down in Oklahoma.”
If you happen to be jigging or dragging baits along the bottom in the right spots, you’ll be landing Chautauqua clinkers—they’re really aggressive fighters.
After noticing all the bass boats around, Staszcyk said he began thinking maybe he should enter a tournament, too. And the rest, as they often say, is history. Like when he fished with Bill Dance.
“It was a draw tournament. I bought a new rod and reel and when we got together I handed it to him, asked him to check it out. He looked it over and then he said ‘Hey, I don’t want to insult you but I wouldn’t let my kid use this for crappie fishing,’” Staszcyk said laughing and shaking his head.
Stasczyk said he probably lost eight or ten good fish that day. Then Dance told him if he ever learned to set a hook properly he might be good one day.
After retiring from the service, he hooked up with Chautaqua. And it’s been a love affair ever since.
“It can be a great lake, but it’s tough to learn,” Stasczyk said. “It’s got a lot of weed beds, though. Anglers can use a lot of the same tactics they use on Lake Erie.” He said the lake is amenable to trolling, including with divers and planer boards and has plenty enough deep waters for downriggers. In the spring, just like Erie’s walleye, jigging is great. Come May, crap-pie and yellow perch are hot anywhere along the weed lines. “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding fish there,” he said.
While the lake’s a big winner for anglers, it’s also a hotspot for the treacherous, dreaded non-anglers. With warmer days and waters come the fun folks: pleasure boaters, jet-skiers, water skiers. Best bet during these heavy traffic periods, Stasczyk said, are mornings and late afternoons. Definitely not holiday weekends, he said. “I don’t take my boat onto the lake during weekends unless I got a tournament.”
Stasczyk said he catches plenty of muskie, though doesn’t target them. Ouch, what a tough life. “I catch too many by accident,” he explained. Just throwing baits into the weeds.” When asked if walleye fishing on Chautauqua was as good as Lake Erie, Stasczyk was briefly stumped. “Wow, that’s a tough one. Of course Lake Erie’s been on fire lately, it’s just stupid. Sometimes I’ll go out with my buddy dragging baits and it’s over in an hour and a half. We’ll clean our fish and then say ‘Hey, let’s go bass fishing on Chautauqua.’”
But don’t be misled by Stasczyk’s love of the big water. Chautauqua’s limit for ‘eyes recently went from 18 inches and three fish to 15 inches and five fish. So there are fish aplenty.
In the spring Stasczyk said he (and others) are particularly fond of Fire-Ball jigs tipped with nightcrawlers on weed lines. Toward late spring and early summer, he said, folks often troll using lead-core line with smaller shad-type baits with blues and silvers—especially in shallower waters at the south end of the lake.
Going into fall, walleye begin moving into deeper holes and jigging returns to favor using baits like Rapala Jigging Raps or Silver Buddies blade baits. Like fishing anywhere, it’s trial and error, Stasczyk said.
On the east side of the lake we crept ever-so-slow, pulled against an easy wind by a MinnKota, dropping chrome Jigging Raps onto the bottom near Dewittville. Ticking along off the bottom with the baits, popping them up four to eight inches, the fish latched on. We pulled a limit in about three hours, with a few fish at 22, 24 inches.
Right after ice-out there’s catfishing, but don’t pack a picnic. “They just use nightcrawlers on the bottom,” Stasczyk explained. “You gotta’ go out on the windiest day right after the ice comes off. It lasts for about three or four weeks.” Along shorelines where mud kicks up good, it’s easy pickings and anyone interested can fill a boat with 18 to 24-inch bullheads. “I’ve done it a few times and a couple of my buddies really get into it,” he said. “It’s not uncommon to catch 50 or 60 in four or five hours.”
Hit Chautauqua Lake soon for bass, crappie, muskie, yellow perch and walleye. But wait—there’s more! Order a Chautauqua Lake today and you’ll receive genuine authentic clinkers at no additional cost. Yes, they’re called clinkers and they have real action: spinning, diving and darting away from you and then toward you. They offer the same familiar and exciting rod-bending action of a real fish. Clinkers? Hot coal ash discarded from steamships operating on the lake more than a century ago. If you’re jigging or bouncing baits off the bottom in the right place you’re likely to land a few. And the good news? There’s no limit and you can take a piece of bona fide Upstate New York history home with you.
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