Cayuga Lake 5/10 -12
Salmon fishing has been good to excellent here this past week, even in spite of the calm conditions. Most debris has blown to shore or settled out, water temps on the surface are ranging from 48 to 50 degrees, which is perfect salmon/brown trout/lake trout temps. The only drawback is that these temps are everywhere and the fish are all over the place – shallow and out from shore and up and down the lake. Expect alewives to start moving in shortly. They are already around some of the marinas.
5/10: Guided my friend Silene and her father Dave for a half day. It was calm and clear out – basically finesse time for salmon. They did well landing 7 or 8 fish including a couple nice ones. A lot of fish were following and hitting. We did see some smallmouth bass and a few perch in shallow in one area.
5/11: Got out with my buddy Mike for some salmon fly-fishing. We started with some good action near shore in one area. Mike really had the hot hand. I was experimenting with a shorter leader (on my intermediate line) and my new “Bionic Bozo” fly. I had a fish or two hookup but nothing special.
As the day went on, Mike kept landing fish while I kept missing them. I don’t think I was doing anything wrong – it was just one of those things. I switched out flies and leaders and still missed fish. I finally had a nice fish circle my fly and grab it. It was game on and without a doubt the biggest salmon I’d seen all day, if not all season. I knew that from the start. After a terrific fight with a great jump Mike netted a beauty – it measured 29″ long and was probably in the 10lb range! My 2nd best all-timer! Mike almost had a 19″er break his flyrod today. They really can fight! Awesome day and we got great photos this time, unlike last year’s 30.5″er when I was by myself. It’s swimming around Cayuga as we speak, ready to make someone else’s day.
My webmaster wanted to do some serious upgrades to this site, but he got busy just before we were ready to roll, so I didn’t put up any photos yet from last year. Sooner or later they will go up.
5/12: Guided Eric and Jim today for a half day. They are both very good anglers – Eric does a lot of BASS tournaments. They had terrific fishing today landing over 20 salmon and browns. Many of the salmon were in the 17″ range, but they had some good ones in the low 20s. Eric landed his first solid brown – a fat 17″er. All fish released today which is always nice.
My favorite way to catch salmon is with the fly-rod, so after our trip I headed back out for around 2 to 3 hours. My favorite way to fly-fish is topwater. And today I managed a nice 21″ salmon that crushed a Gartside Gurgler. I also missed 3 other hits. Just awesome stuff!