Reports

I spent the last two days on Cayuga Lake and the bite and fishing were challenging and perplexing to say the least. Fish are mostly in fairly deep water – around 75′ to 90′. Here’s how things went:

6/24 AM: Guided Doug and his 7 year old grandson Wesley for a 1/2 day. 7 years old is generally too young for the kind of fishing I do, but Doug had been out with me before and knew what things entailed. Wes did a commendable job of persevering despite the slow bite. Our region (north of Ithaca)and areas further north were hit with very heavy rain on the night of the 23rd. We likely had 1″ to 2″ of rain! Vast areas of Cayuga Lake were muddy. The laker bite was tough and I ran all around looking for areas of clearer water. We had a couple hits in the murk, but lakers are sight feeders and I felt clear water would be better. We tried around Dean’s, North and South of Sheldrake, Rocky Dock and around AES. Very few hits were had, though an awful lot of fish were around. Fish seemed hard to hook. Eventually I took a few drops in hope of hooking a fish for Wes as he took a break. I managed to hook one and handed him the rod! He was very excited. Sometimes you have to do what you gotta do! He had a great time – enjoying the boat ride as much as anything. But it was very tough – especially for a youngster.

6/25 AM: After yesterday’s tough bite, I felt today would be better. I met Bruce and his wife Mary (I think she goes by Shelly if my brain serves me correctly) at the launch at 6:30 am and off we went. No boats had gone out of Taughannock before us. Boat traffic was very light, which is the way I like it. We found terrific numbers of fish and Bruce had one on with his first drop of the jig. Despite a lot of chasers and activity on the FF, nothing much happened in terms of solid grabs. We tweaked a few things with our presentation as time went on and were in business. Shelly got things started with a nice 27.5″ laker. Then Bruce landed a couple more, including a 19″ and 27″ wild fish that we released. Our fish didn’t have any attached eels, which was nice. It was a very pleasant day on the water with good company. Bruce had a lot of great info regarding fly-fishing sea-run Atlantic Salmon which was really neat to hear.

cayuga lake