Cayuga 5/18, 5/19, 5/21, Skaneateles 5/20
Cayuga/Taughannock 5/18: Fished with my buddy Dave for around 4 hours. I was going to check on the pike fishing so I loaded up the fly-rods and a couple spinning rods. We decided to cast around the park area since water temps for “salmon perfect” at 48 degrees and we had a nice breeze out of the north. To our surprise there were salmon all over the place! The only thing wrong was the size of them! They were mostly 12″ to 14″ fish. The park was stocked recently judging from the number of yearlings swarming around the marina, but these were older fish. I also landed my 2nd. Cayuga Lake rainbow – a fish around 12″. So nothing great with the size. We did have a couple decent (15″+) fish chase in our jigs. Let’s hope these fish “recruit” and we see Cayuga return to its rightful place as the “Landlocked Salmon King of the Finger Lakes”. I never got the chance to check on the pike.
Cayuga/Dean’s 5/19: Guide trip with Mike and Cathy. Mike fishes Senecaa bit and wanted to get the jigging technique down. The winds were looking pretty unpredictable so we fished Cayuga instead. It was a good call. We actually marked a lot of fish in 175′ which was pretty wild. We tried a lot of different depths and wound up in around 155′. Fishing was very good for an hour or two and we boated 4 nice lakers – a 28″, 29″, 26″ and 27″. A couple others were dropped. Then the wind came up around 11 am and most boats left the lake! We tried fighting the wind for awhile but it didn’t work. We tried other areas – nil. After the wind died we had another hook up and that was pretty much it. What’s cool this year is that a lot of suspended fish are very aggressive. That often isn’t the case.
Skaneateles Lake 5/20: Guide trip with Gordon. Gordon had a great trip on Skinny fly-fishing last November and we were hoping for a repeat. Things started with calm conditions and sun, but the wind eventually came up out of the north. I had him working a few different set ups including an intermediate line, a type 4 sink and a RIO Deep 7. The intermediate is my “bread and butter” on this lake and today was no different. Smallmouths dominated the action with plenty of fish available pretty much wherever we fished. Gordon took a few breaks and threw a jig. For whatever reason (small fish or a little rust) a few trout were lost and missed early on. He had hold of a laker on the fly and what looked like a decent salmon or bow. The misty rain came up for awhile. We worked hard, fishing a bunch of different stretches. Eventually a couple nice rainbows (15″ fish) came to the net via the jigs. Overall it was a fun action filled day. A few 20″ rainbows would have been nice, but we can’t have everything! The beauty of this lake is still unsurpassed.
Cayuga/Dean’s 5/21: Fished a full-day with Eleonore and John. John caught the largest brown recorded thus far on my boat last fall while jigging Cayuga. We were hoping for some laker jigging action today. The fishing was tough. It was a nice sunny day with a 10 mph northerly. We worked hard, checking a lot of areas. One 28″ laker came from around 110′ and one 29″ fish came from 150′. Some bait is finally starting to show itself but over the past 5 years or so I’ve never seen such a cold spring. These fish seem to be moving deeper by the day! We almost broke the “Angling Zone Depth Record” with a laker hooked in close to 200′ of water. The fish was suspended down around 40′. We lost it just before it came into view. Two other fish were dropped. Not much we could do about it – short hits. We need some warm weather to get the bait moving in. Fish are around and I think tomorrow’s warm front will help. They were just on the bottom and inactive today. When we saw fish and could get on top of them, they usually responded.