Reports

Guided Dave, Blake and Todd for the full day today. They’ve joined me a couple times over the past couple years for some laker jigging. Dave books the trip well in advance and he’s had a knack for picking generally good days. Today was no exception.

We started just after 6 am with some steady laker action. Despite the full moon and mild cold front, the bite was very good to excellent throughout the day. Cayuga Lake is tough to beat from late July through August. By September, I find the fishing significantly better (for trout) on Keuka and Owasco Lakes. Dave nailed a 27″ laker to start things off. Later in the day the guys hooked a triple! Around 14 lakers were landed on the day, and not a single lamprey came up! That was weird, given what we’ve seen thus far this year. Fish resumed hitting well again as storms began to develop around 1 pm.

High moment of the day was Todd hooking a very solid rainbow right up top, late in the trip. After some strong runs and a great surface fight I netted the 28″ bow. What a fish! It did have a large live lamprey attached and a few other wounds. We took a quick couple photos but unfortunately were unable to release the fish. I think the eels, plus the hard (although quick) fight in the tepid 81 degree water combined to be a bit too much. The fish was on the thinner side, weighing around 7lbs 9oz.

I’ve had some good to excellent reports regarding rainbow trout action on Cayuga Lake this year. We had a very good spawning run of them starting back last December and the fish were in very good to excellent condition. It’s been an off year for Cayuga’s salmon, browns and to some extent lakers (at least in terms of size) so it’s nice having some long-awaited great news regarding Cayuga Lake’s coldwater fishery.

cayuga lake rainbow trout