Cayuga Lake 1/20 – 1/22

Reports

Got out for three days in a row in my boat. Water temp is around 41. Here’s the breakdown:

1/20: Fished with my friend Silene for the day starting around 11 am. We had pretty strong south winds for most of the day and then it finally let up. No rain, which was nice. Action was slow. I fly-fished and she casted gear. I missed some hits and had some follows. She had one hookup momentarily but that was it.

1/21: Got out with my buddy Mike for the day, starting around 10 am. A lot of boats were out today. We brought gear for salmon, lakers and pike. We like to hedge our bets! Salmon fishing was pretty good for a bit – I nailed a 17″er and a 22″, Mike got a 21″. Mike had a nice lake trout take a few swipes at his streamer which was pretty cool. We did some laker jigging and it was good. We landed 4 of them up to around 26″. I kept my large salmon and it was stuffed with gobies. The fish had a large lamprey scar on it.

1/22: Did my first guided trip of the season and it went well. I met Gordon at the launch around 8 am and we were underway by 8:30. Salmon fishing was good early, then slowed then picked up again. He wound up landing 4 solid fish all on the fly. Best was 24″ and smallest was just under 18″. He also lost two good ones and missed another half dozen hits. We saw a salmon around 6lbs or so jump clear out of the water in one area. It had a big lamprey attached to it and it appeared as though the fish was trying to “shake it.” The water level appears to have gone up a little bit due to all the runoff. We finished our full day up around 4:30 pm. Really fun salmon fly-fishing!