Cayuga Lake 9/15 + 16
Did back to back morning half days on Cayuga Lake. Bite windows were somewhat tight but the fishing was very good. AM fog was a factor on both days and I started trips at 8 am. Steady weather should make for more good fishing this week. Cold fronts in September and onwards through the fall tend to play havoc with the bite.
9/15 AM: Guided John and Sheila starting just after 8 am. The fog was thick and we motored slowly up the east shore with navigational lights on. John – a self proclaimed “geezer” has fished Cayuga and Seneca Lake for years, starting back in the 1960s (and maybe before) He did some fisheries work/classes with Cornell back in the early 1970s and can remember when lake trout fishing was poor and alewives numbers were very low in Cayuga Lake. And back then there was no natural production of lake trout. Some people tend to think fishing was much better back in the 1960s and 1970s, and it might be true for some species, but not trout and salmon in Cayuga Lake.
We had a very solid window of hot fishing for about an hour and a half or two just when the fog cleared. John and Sheila had two doubles going – one in which we landed both fish. Eleven nice lakers were landed and another 4 or 5 solid hookups were lost. Fish ran to 28″. Fishing slowed down markedly towards the end of the morning for us.
9/16: Guided Sion and his dad Gwyndaf – both from Wales, today starting at 8 am. I picked them up at Taughannock and we motored north. Sion (name pronounced Sean/Shawn) and his father hadn’t fished Cayuga Lake before, apart from some shore fishing. The bite was somewhat slow today for lakers. The guys landed some nice fish up to around 27″. What made today amazing was the two rainbows Sion managed to land – he nabbed a fat 30″er and a 27″er! The 30″er was wild and the 27″ was stocked. Both fish were unreleaseable due to injuries so it will be rainbow trout tonight and for the next couple nights. We try to release most rainbows out of Cayuga Lake, but this year their numbers are the highest I’ve seen since I’ve owned my boat (going back to the fall of 2001.) So I don’t have any qualms about harvesting a few bows. The 30″er weighed 11lbs 8oz! That’s an incredibly fat fish and not atypical for what I’ve been seeing this year on Cayuga. The guys finished our trip with a double on lakers Great day and tremendous weather out there – high of around 80 with a light breeze.
I’ve got another week or so of laker oriented trips on Cayuga Lake then we’ll be mixing things up a bit with some dates on Skaneateles, Owasco and possibly Seneca. I’m looking forward to seeing how things are doing on the other lakes.