Cayuga/Dean’s 6/28 + Skaneateles 6/29
I hope these reports are appreciated (I know they are!) cause it’s 12:22 am as I write this and I’ll be getting up in a few hours! Did a trip with Tom and his 2 kids Abigail and Willy. Laker fishing started out slow with the overcast skies. Fish started hitting around 9 am and we had a pretty good bite for 2 hours or so on nice 25″ to 28″ lakers. High point of the morning was a nice 27″ fat brown trout (probably over 9lbs, maybe bigger) that hit Tom’s white jig. All fish but one bleeding laker were released. Both kids managed lakers with Willy getting lucky and catching his just before we ended the trip. Abby caught 2.
I spent the afternoon exploring some east shore areas for bass. No luck on the bass but I saw a lot of freshwater drum. Their numbers are going up fast. I think the 92′ hatch that replenished Oneida Lake also helped the Cayuga watershed.
The evening was spent with (a different) Tom. We had a good time despite the heavy waves. He’s a die-hard bass fishermen but enjoyed the lake trout action. He landed a handful of fish up to 31″ (probably 9lbs +). He was another “restaurant veteran” and it’s always great chatting about that line of work.
Today was Skaneateles with David and then we were joined by his GF Lauren later on. He was fly-fishing for smallmouth bass and it went very well. Plenty of action on primarily small fish, but with enough follows and hookups from 15″+ fish to make things interesting. Perch are around too, but we didn’t see any big ones. We used an intermediate line and buggers. A sinking line might have produced some bigger fish, but our action was good and we felt no need to switch up. I taught Lauren how to fly-cast in around 2 hours. That was fun and as a Cornell student she had no problems picking it up 😉 The hatch was a disappointment – we were apparently late for the drakes. Maybe 2 weeks late according to a homeowner down the lake who told me the “bugs were terrible 2 weeks ago!”. It was fun watching the insect activity, but some fish activity would have been better. H2O was in the upper 60s to low 70s. Not too warm for good shallow bassin’ for awhile.