Cayuga Lake 8/3 + Skaneateles Lake 8/4
8/3 Cayuga Lake: Guided Douglas for a full day trip out of Long Point starting at 6 am. Fishing was very good from the start with Doug landing 3 or 4 lakers in short order. It didn’t take Doug long to learn the technique. We had good numbers of fish around us throughout the day, though the bite slowed a bit during the middle of the morning. Fishing really picked up around noon and stayed hot until we left. Douglas landed a dozen solid lakers to 29″. Lamprey wounding wasn’t too bad. 4 large eels came up on 3 fish. A few fish were completely clean while a few had some healed up scars. Great day to be on the lake fishing and Doug was impressed with the fishery.
8/4 Skaneateles Lake: Guided Tyree and Mike today for a 1/2 day in the AM starting at 7. Tyree’s wife won a free 1/2 day trip as an Preferred Rewards member at Bass Pro Shops. The guys wanted to do some smallmouth fishing. The action in general was very good today with dropshotting being the most productive method. Around 23′ to 27′ of water seemed to be holding the most fish – it was the “activity zone” with smallmouths, rock bass and some large pumpkinseed sunfish concentrating there. The hard thing with the dropshotting was getting past the hungry rock bass, but a fish is a fish and the guys had a good time catching them.
No great sizes on the bass. A fish just over 17″ was the best of the AM, followed by at least one16″er. Most were around 15″ and nearly all of the8 or9bass landed were legal. Plenty of rockbass were in the mix along with a couple of the aforementioned pumpkinseeds. The guys used Gulp Minnows, Berkley Power Dropshot worms, Sliders and Lunker City Ribsters. They all worked.
Some fish were shallow and tubes and Superflukes yielded a few smallmouths, but the majority were clearly deep. The is one lake where on a given day an angler can catch a bass in 2′ of water, 15′, 25′ and 45′. There are bass feeding on crayfish and bass working perch fry in this lake throughout the summer.
The launch was a crowded mess by 11:30 am. Too many boats were allowed to launch today. (The launch is closed when it’s full.) It also needs to be re-striped and people are parking willy-nilly (haphazardly.) I recommend fishing this lake early and leaving early on hot weekend days. Or launching out of Mandana – which was also busy today.