Cayuga Lake 3/26 + 27
Got out two days in a row for some fly-fishing. We’ve had some very good action on mostly sub-legal fish, though enough solid fish have been in the mix to keep things interesting.
3/26: Guided Mark I. for a full day starting just after 9 am. He’s one of the best fly-casters I guide. Winds were fairly calm to start and a lot of boats were out trolling both the south end and around Taughannock/Frontenac Points. We tried north of Taughannock for a bit and didn’t do anything. Some trollers were picking up short fish.
A run downlake paid off pretty quickly with Mark getting into some good action on salmon around 13″ to 14″. He then managed to hook a solid fish that put a good bend in his 7 wt. fly-rod but for some reason it got off. He had good pressure on it and got a good hookset. We worked a lot of water near the south end of the lake but didn’t do much.
Mark was throwing some big flies on his 7 wt. so we took a break and did some lake trout jigging. The jigging was pretty darn good and he had quite a few hits and hookups. He landed two nice fish that wound up as dinner. One was wild and both appeared to have gobies in their stomachs. We finished up with some more fly fishing but didn’t encounter any fish.
3/27: Got out with Mike for around 6 hours of afternoon fly-fishing. There were some areas we wanted to work that I hadn’t fished in awhile (and some I’d never fished much at all.) We hit paydirt in pretty short order and were getting hits and follows from salmon of various sizes – most sublegal. Mike landed the first few fish and also nabbed a brown just under 15″. Not quite the chunkster of recent weeks, but it’s good to see the browns doing well. He also had some 18″ range salmon follow him in. In one area I got a hit and landed and released an 18.5″ salmon after a quick photo. Mike had also had a follow from what might have been a decent laker or brown. We worked a few other areas of the lake with no fish. We did see a bald eagle being harrassed by some seagulls. Seeing majestic eagles in the sky never gets old!
Water levels are still low on Cayuga Lake. Water temperatures are still cold. Average lake temps we encountered yesterday were around 41 and that was probably on the warmer side of the lake. Looks like some nice warmer temps this week, then back down again next.