Cayuga Lake 4/20 + 21
4/20: Launched out of Taughannock with regular Mark I, who usually fly-fishes. I felt that we could have a good salmon day today. The fog delayed our trip by an hour and a half and it never really did burn off. Fishing was very slow to start. For four hours of fishing he had one hit. We tried some different areas and tactics and eventually started picking up fish. He wound up having a great day with 8 mostly nice salmon landed and one big 25.5″ pickerel. Fish came on intermediate fly-lines and a woolly bugger. Some came on gear as well. It was a catch and release day today and we at least were able to take care of a couple lampreys.
4/21 PM: After last night’s rain I was really wondering what conditions would be like today. We got pummelled with rain late yesterday PM (both while fishing and later on.) The ground is obviously still saturated and all that muddy runoff went right into the lakes. The idiotic “ditching” that the local highway departments seem to be so fond of doing does virtually nothing to help anything that I can see. You get sheer muddy water running right into the lakes. The water still pools up along the roadside, because the system is imperfect. A ditch will just end for no reason. There’s still tons of erosion – much more that there would be if the grass were just left there. It is a complete waste of time and money. But I digress….
We launched after a brief heavy rainstorm. Inshore water was very muddy and full of debris, but we were lucky that the winds were mild and kept the mud and junk in shallow. We had a start when Michael landed two lakers from 18″ to 23″ within the first hour and a half. Fishing was slow afterwards for a couple hours then picked up notably. Another 4 lakers were landed including LeAnn’s 28″er and Norris’s solids running 25″ to 27″. We had one wild fish and Norris also managed a 19″er. Fish were feeding on gobies and alewives. It was a fun trip!