Cayuga Lake 2/22 – 24
I never thought I’d see t-shirt weather here in the Finger Lakes Region on February 24th, but my car thermometer got up to 77 degrees today! As long as we don’t hit 115 degrees this summer, I’ll take this warm weather on occasion. After all, there’s nothing I can do about it.
Fly-fishing and gear-casting for landlocked salmon, brown trout and occasional lakers has been very good thus far this winter. Action picked up for us over the past few days. Water temps were around 39 on Wednesday (and on last Sunday) and hit over 41 degrees today. I’m sure we’ll be in for more winter weather sooner or later – certainly in March.
2/22: Got out with my friend Silene for around 5 hours of fishing. I cast flies and she worked gear. She hadn’t had any luck last time we were out but her luck changed today. We had some very good fishing for a couple hours with us landing 7 decent fish – 2 browns (one around 16″ and one at 18″ – though very fat) and 5 salmon up to just under 22″ (basically 21.5″.) We kept her nicer brown and two salmon that had lamprey hits on them. Great fun. She caught most of the fish today, which was great to see. My fish came on my Bionic Smelt fly and an intermediate line and hers came on a stickbait and a tube jig.
2/23: Got out with my buddy Terry for around 5 hours of fishing. I went with my fly-tackle most of the day and he went with spinning gear. We had terrific action with us having a lot of follows but also landing some hard fighting fish. I landed a 24″ salmon and a couple smaller ones (nice to see some dinks around.) Terry landed a 19″ salmon plus a super hard fighting brown that went 24″. It was as fat as any I’ve ever seen. I’d bet it weighed 7lbs. Certainly over 6 for sure. We released everything today. Had a lot of follows too. One laker hookup shallow as well.
2/24: I had an email from Tracee who was in the region looking for a fishing date for her and her husband Harry. She read my reports and thought perhaps the fishing was slow, given that the past weekend’s fly-fishing trips only resulted in a couple browns (though me and my friend Jeff did well on lakers.) I let her know that we were fly-fishing for the most part and it does have its limitations. I rarely expect to catch as many fish as a gear guy or a troller. So she was reassured and we booked the half day.
They were impressed with the fishing today. We started with jigging lakers and two were brought to the net. Casting stickbaits for salmon resulted in another laker and two salmon – one around 20″ and one at 18″. We kept all the lakers and the bigger salmon (that also had a lamprey scar.) Stomach checks revealed gobies. Great day and you could never ask for better weather! Rain was to the north of us this AM but Ithaca never received a drop!