Cayuga out of Taughannock 3/19
As I headed back from some swimming at Cornell this afternoon I checked out the lake and it looked beautiful. Imagine my surprise as I launched my boat at 3 pm without another trailer in the parking lot! After fishing our tails off yesterday, I knew I’d be in for some better fishing today with the change in the weather. Fishing didn’t start off promising, but after an hour of covering water I stumbled upon a pattern and the fun began. My first fish landed was a 24″ solid brown – not very fat, due to a lamprey wound, but nonetheless a nice fish which I kept. It weighed 5lbs even and had nothing in its stomach. Then I lost another fish that appeared to be another brown around 23″ to 24″. My leader broke not long after I’d rerigged it AND checked my knot. It was a clean break – maybe the fish’s teeth, I don’t know. Then came a 22″ chrome Landlocked Salmon that wore out my arm! This fish didn’t want to give up! It dug and dug in a fight that would rival any smallmouth bass. For my money, Landlocked Atlantic Salmon are the best fighting gamefish in freshwater – at least in the northeast, BAR NONE! They can do anything a smallmouth bass can do, yet better. A LS in 48-degree water is capable of jumping 10 times or more. I love smallies, but I’ve never seen one jump that many times! I released the salmon.
More chases, hits and misses came. Then I landed an 18″ salmon that jumped a bunch of times and gave a great accounting of itself. More hits/chases and misses followed, and then I set into a very solid fish. I thought maybe I foul-hooked it since it ran so much, but I got a glimpse of a chrome beauty and no, it was fair hooked. It was a thick bodied fish from head to tail and didn’t fight much like a salmon. It looked like it may have been a 4 to 5lb rainbow! Either way, if you were within a few hundred yards of me, you’d have heard me yell when the hook popped out and I lost it! Another hit was had, then it was time to go.
All in all, fantastic fishing with a ton of action – lots of follows, hits and some nice hookups. There are some real quality fish in Cayuga Lake this year. I released the two salmon and just kept the big brown. I didn’t work the fish I found too hard, I kept trying new areas just to see the extent of the good fishing. Water temps ranged from 36 to 37 today. With the exception of occasions where I’ve run into schools of fish, I don’t think I can remember a day when I had better action from large fish in a Finger Lake. I had 2 browns that were in the 23″ to 25″ range, at least one salmon or rainbow hooked that was also in the 24″ to 25″ range and follows from some fish that were also that size.
Again I recommend people limit their kill on this lake. These fish are delicious, but statewide limits of 5 fish incl. no more than 3 salmon per person per day are ridiculous and this fishery could not sustain that kind of harvest. Why Lake Ontario steelheaders are confined to one fish per day in the tribs and we have such liberal bag limits – on a fishery jeopardized as much by exotics as the Great Lakes is totally beyond me. There aren’t THAT many fish around! I limit myself to one fish a day generally – once in a while two. I do the same with my clients.