Cayuga Lake 8/9 + 10, Sodus Bay 8/10
Did some warmwater guiding on both days. 8/9 was basically an aborted panfishing trip with Jack and his grandkids. T-storms came through and that was that. We did manage to find some pans around the N. end of the lake.
8/10 was the kind of trip I love doing. Justin from the Buffalo area was interested in catching some pickerel and gar. He’s into taxidermy and hadn’t caught or mounted any of those species yet. I was certain we could get pickerel on Cayuga, but the Cayuga gar still aren’t in their summertime haunts yet for the most part, so I figured we may have to motor up to Sodus. Justin managed to land 3 nice 22″ + pickerel in the AM. We looked around for gar and only saw one – no schools. So we packed up and drove to Sodus Bay. After a 1/2 hour or so on the bay we found gar and lots of them! I set Justin up with a castable rope fly and it didn’t take too long before he landed his first gar – a small one around 30″ at best. We had a lot of follows and one or two other “hookups” before he nabbed a beautiful 38″ fish! Nice drag ripping fight too! Water temps were “gar-perfect” and I’ve definitely got gar fever. Fun trip! Champlain is in the works over the next week or two! Monster gar!