Cayuga Lake 9/21 + Owasco Lake 9/22 AM
9/21 Cayuga Lake: Guided Mark I. and Greg today for a full day of lake trout fishing. I picked the guys up via boat at Taughannock at 7 am. Fishing was slow but steady to start with around a 1/2 dozen fish coming to the net by 10 am and another 1/2 dozen or so by the day’s end. Most of Greg’s prior fishing had been stuff like pond fishing for bass, so it took some practice to get the feel for playing a fish to the net. He dropped a few good ones early on. The bite picked up a bit when the fog burned off then slowed. The last fish of the day was taken just before we called it a day. Lakers ran from around 23″ to 28″. We had three at 28″. A couple wild fish in the mix. Zero lampreys and barely any sign of lampreys. This year might feature the cleanest looking fish I’ve ever seen out of Cayuga Lake. One small salmon was landed and another nice salmon and rainbow followed jigs to the boat. Good day – around 85′ and out was best.
9/22 AM Owasco Lake: Guided the Hermans for a 1/2 day of smallmouth bass fishing. We tried a few different things in the AM -e.g. trying for some offshore fish but wound up only encountering loads of mostly small perch and a possible rainbow that hit Eleonore’s jig. Conventional fishing with flukes produced a nice 18 1/2″ smallmouth for Eleonore and a 17.5″ for John as well as a couple smaller bass, a few rockbass, perch and a couple good smallies that got off. Very little boat traffic on the lake. Beautiful day to be out!