Reports

My June schedule is very busy.  A couple dates remain open – June 28th and 29th, a Thursday and Friday, then we’re onto July.  I might be able to add a few PM trips depending on how the fishing goes.  Seneca Lake remains somewhat slow, given how many fish are around.  Friends caught a couple nice lakers on Saturday, but that was it.  Gobies are showing up in lake trout stomachs over there.  The alewife population is still very high there.  All that food might be keeping the bite slow for now, or perhaps it’s been the weather pattern.  We shall see!

Cayuga Lake 6/8:  Guided Brandon, John and Jordan for a 1/2 day starting just after 10:30 am.  Brandon loves to start early, but his friends are more casual anglers.  They originally booked a PM trip, but my morning stayed open, so we found a nice compromise.  I had a good idea of where to start and it paid off!  Brandon nabbed a personal best lake trout in short order – a 33″er!  Fishing was hot and heavy for the first two hours or so and then slowed down.  Everyone managed to catch fish.  All in all, a very solid midday trip!

It was a fun day and I’m scheduled to have Brandon back on board soon!

6/9:  I met Jon and his wife Stephanie at the launch at 8 am.  The forecast for rain kept a lot of people off of Cayuga Lake today.  It didn’t deter us and we set up near the launch and had a short little hot bite of some aggressive trout and possible salmon/rainbows.  Only one or two lakers were landed early, but quite a few missed/lost.

As the rain cleared, I felt a longer run wouldn’t be torturous, so we headed north.  Fishing wound up being very solid on the day.  We hit the double-digits.  Most fish were on the smaller side than what we’d been seeing lately.  Stephanie managed to catch the biggest two fish while Jon had the numbers.  I first guided Jon back around 2010 or 2011 when he was 10 years old!  He told me that I might be guiding three generations of his family down the line!  I’m looking forward to it.  We had a lot of fun and Stephanie wanted to be my cover-gal, so up she goes shortly!

6/10 Waneta Lake:  Mark and I headed back to Waneta to give the fly-fishing for muskies another shot today.  Mark was hoping for some redemption after last week’s tough day.  Last week, we had perfect conditions with the new moon, wind and cloud cover.  Only problem was that it was close to the opener and every musky fisherman had the same idea!  It was crowded, and this lake fishes small.

This time, we had a cold front come through, which typically makes for a tougher musky bite.  We did have good wind and cloud cover and much less fishing/boating pressure today.  Mark and I discussed a few things we wanted to do differently and we did incorporate those into our day today.  We also kept expanding the areas we fished.

All of that was to no avail.  Mark never had a hit or a discernable follow today.  I’ll chalk another trip into the “research file” and add it to my notes and memory bank.  We’ll be back at it in the fall, as usual.  That’s when Mark has had his best fly-fishing for musky success on this lake.  He’s caught one on Waneta this time of year, but on gear.  Overall our success rate on the fly-tackle has still been pretty good on Waneta Lake despite how little musky fishing we’ve done here.  It’d be much easier patterning these fish if we were out here 3 times a week, but that’s just not feasible, so we do the best that we can.