Cayuga Lake 8/15 + 16
Lake trout jigging remains superb here on Cayuga Lake. Nice browns and salmon are also around the same areas. Fish continue to feed heavily. I’ve been getting back into largemouth bass fishing on Cayuga Lake (really for the first time seriously since around 2005/2006) and am gradually getting back into the swing of it.
8/15 Cayuga Lake out of Long Point: Got out with my buddy Terry starting around 6:45 am. Days are rapidly getting shorter and it’s getting light around 5:50 to 6 o’clock. It’s nice not to have to get up as early as in June/July. In our younger days of bass fishing together I’d often meet Terry at Sodus Bay at 5 am. It would pay off to do that now, but I am not into getting up at 3:30 am like I used to.
We are slowly getting our tackle into order – i.e. figuring out what rod/reel/line combinations we want to use; trying to keep our presentations to a minimum and seeing how the lake’s been fishing.
Today we worked completely different areas than last week. Terry nabbed a chunky 18″ fish in fairly short order in our first area. He pretty much had the hot hand (as has been the case lately) and finished the day with 5 legal fish. I landed a couple pickerel and one bass. Not the day I was hoping for but I found what wasn’t working. The lake is really a different ballgame than year’s past with weedgrowth way behind normal. This is due to the cold spring and months of muddy water and subsequent poor light penetration.
8/16 Cayuga Lake out of Myers: I made a long run out of Myers to pick up Nic and his daughter Juliet from their house near Sheldrake. Fishing was outstanding with them landing 15 lakers and one brown. They dropped another brown and lost a few other good lakers too. That was all during a 4 hour half day trip. These are the good old days on Cayuga Lake!!! No question about it! I cleaned two lakers and they were full of fresh bait.
I brought my bass gear along so I could get some much needed redemption after the trout trip. I played around with some different lures and hit a pickerel in short order. Then I nabbed a 15″ chunky largemouth. In another area I had a good bass follow. My last area produced three more nice bass including an 18″ chunker. So I finally felt myself getting into a groove with my bassin’. We’ll be hitting completely different areas next time out and refining our presentations. I would also like to spend a morning hammering lakers. We have too many options here in Central New York!