Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 7/20
Today puts a wrap on the longest stretch of trips I’ve ever done in 19 days. I’ll be taking a few days off to recover and “patch my bones” then it’s back on the water at a slower pace for the most part. Surface temps on Cayuga Lake hit 76 today (it’s probably 72 degrees down 2′) but it finally feels like summer on the lake. Weed mats are floating around and there’s a little plankton bloom as well.
I guided Bob and his dad Andy for the AM 1/2 day. Jigging lakers was excellent with around 33 or 34 fish landed. In my 11 years of guiding I’ve never seen such great numbers of lake trout available. We had fish to 31″ long today, so some big fish are around. One live lamprey came up on the whole bunch. I think we had just one wild fish too. Oftentimes I find wild fish in different groups and areas than stocked ones. On Seneca Lake, the north end fishery is usually mostly wild fish for most of the season. Catch 4 fish down around Lodi or Valois, or Watkins Glen and 2 of them are usually clipped. As I’ve said before, a lot of the unclipped fish are poor hatchery clips that have regenerated, but there are more wild fish than I’ve ever seen before overall. Anyways it was a fun AM.
My PM trip was with Steve and Larry. Steve has joined me in the past a few times for some fly-fishing and jigging. We checked a few areas south of the launch for bass without much action, but we weren’t pitching and the sun was high and water calm. After an hour or so of casting, we settled on the lakers. The bite was slower but the guys landed 6 to 8 nice fish. Fishing for us has been best from 65′ to 90′ FOW, but there are lakers suspended out over deep water throughout the lake.