Cayuga Lake 8/18 + 19
Fishing was excellent over the past couple days with solid action throughout the day. Laker fishing on Cayuga Lake cannot be beat right now! Of course as I say this it will slow down…but that’s the way it goes.
Got out on Thursday AM with Norbert and Steve. Yours truly forgot that I was to pick them up by boat at Taughannock, so we started a little late. That didn’t hurt us since the fishing actually got better as the AM went on. Norb had the hot hand to start after Steve caught the first laker which was a dink. After a while Steve blamed his new fishing hat and once he got rid of it, he did much better. Anyways the guys had a fun day with one bonus salmon just over 18″ caught. The best laker was a fat pig that had to go over 11lbs even though it wasn’t super long. Great start to the day!
PM: My pm 1/2 day was with Chuck and his wife Sue. They both like to troll for Landlocked Salmon/Browns in the winter/spring and wanted to see what the jigging was about. They were super impressed! Both trips today featured around 13 to 14 solid lakers landed. I took some drops with the jigs on Chuck and Sues’ insistence when they took breaks. It was fun catching some lakers!
8/19: Did my AM trip with Steve and George – both of whom have places on Keuka Lake. We’ve been out before and had some great fishing out of Hammondsport with Steve having caught a nice rainbow there a few years back. The guys really hit the lakers well today with around 15 solid fish landed and a nice salmon lost after jumping about three feet out of the water!
After catching Keuka fish for decades they were very impressed with the condition on the Cayuga fish. Keuka fish have usually been on the thin side. They are usually thin at best and somewhat anorexic at worse. I wouldn’t quite call them “emaciated” – a term I would use for the majority of Skaneateles lakers. But thin is about right. The Cayuga fish in terms of internet dating would have “..a few extra pounds” or are “curvy” or “thick” or better yet “voluptuous” – a word that has been bastardized through the years. They are well fed, let’s just put it that way.
My PM fishing (basically my PM trips have started just after 11 am) was some fun fishing with my old pal Shahab, whom I hadn’t fished with in over 7 or 8 years if I remember right. He’s out in Oregon doing fisheries promotion work with their version of the DEC. We had a good, albeit sweltering time out there catching around 1/2 dozen nice lakers. Shahab’s patented jigging technique resulted in one deep hooked fish that left my boat looking bloody like the site of a homicide. Fortunately my Crestliner washdown system was hooked up and within a minute it was cleaned up. That fish will be grilled. Don’t waste trout! I always am prepared to keep fish when needed. Even my sometimes futile Lake Ontario excursions are accompanied by a cooler filled with ice. You just never know when you’ll have to keep a fish, even when you don’t plan on it.