Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 5/8
Guided a full day with James, Mark and Pat starting around 8 am. There are fairly staggering numbers of lake trout in the 130′ to 150′ range. Baitfish are moving up. The bite was slow for us to start, despite the heavy numbers of fish, but in the early PM the fishing improved. The guys landed 6 solid trout, including 2 around the 27″ mark. A few were missed/dropped too, as the guys learned the technique. We had one small lamprey come up on a trout, but overall the fish were gorgeous – as clean as they come. One fish was wild.
We kept them all today and I was looking forward to seeing what they’d been eating. It was kind of surprising to see that they were all stuffed with the usual alewives. We had one or two gobies in the entire lot of fish. No smelt. This seems to suggest that the lakers have a strong preference for alewives. As many of you probably know, there was a large goby die-off in Cayuga Lake late this winter or early this spring. Dead gobies litter the bottom in the shallows around Aurora and Long Point. I’m sure they’re all over the entire lake, but those are the places we looked at. We also saw some healthy ones, but either overpopulation or something possibly related to the heavy winter (or some other factor) wiped many of them out.
Some bluegills were in at the Long Point Marina. Apart from that, we didn’t see any panfish shallow. If you want those, up north would be the place to go, though with this streak of July temps panfish should be moving in just about everywhere shortly. Funny though, James did spot one sunfish just under the surface in around 140′ FOW. Pretty amazing!