Cayuga Lake 11/14 + 11/15
I fished with my buddy Mike over the last two days. We launched out of Taughannock on Saturday armed with our fly-rods and some gear – the target being northern pike. Calm winds aren’t great for pike fishing, but that’s what we had. We started before 7 am and fishing was difficult at best. Scattered floating weeds made fishing the east shore tough and the lack of wind hampered our fishing on the west shore. Water temps were around 50/51. We persevered and conditions changed during the course of the day. I picked up a 30″ healthy looking northern on a fly midday. We had follows on tube jigs from small landlocked salmon (15″-) fish. That’s a good sign for future fishing. Mike missed a couple good hits – likely pike. We fished the entire day and 1/2 hour before dark a 37″ beauty nailed my X-rap on the east shore. We got some good photos before releasing the fish. The pike were fighting SUPERBLY – just in peak form! Great surges and drag ripping runs.
Today we grabbed our perch stuff and launched out of Dean’s Cove. It was an interesting day. We never found many perch in my area from last week. Deep water produced a 12″+ jack and a nice pickerel. Cayuga has big perch and there’s no doubt in my mind they are located deep this time of year – at least a lot of them. IMO the smaller (yet still eating size) perch are shallower and readily available – so that’s where people spend their time. We marked a fish off the bottom in 50′ of water. Mike lowered his minnows and found he had a fish on when he brought them up. Laker is what we thought, but unbelievably, it turned out to be a nice pickerel! 45′ over 50′ of water! Working around 15′ of water near Frontenac Island produced a bunch of perch for us and another pickerel. A west shore area produced more (and nicer fish) plus a bullhead. 10′ to 45′ of water is where all of our fish came from, with 15′ to 20′ generally holding most fish. I have no problems filleting 8″ to 9″ perch, and Cayuga delivers. We took home around 34 perch and let go another 15 or more. Double hook rigs with fatheads worked best for us, though we didn’t try much else.
Trollers reported good laker fishing over the weekend in around 120′. The weather was great and water levels still good for easy launching. Boat traffic was low.