Cayuga Lake 9/4 + 9/5
Busy wind-down to the summer guiding season. Fall is here now for all intents and purposes and I’m ready to roll! Here’s how things shaped up:
9/4 AM: Guided Eric and his son Andrew for 1/2 day out of Taughannock. They don’t do a whole lot of fishing, but at least one big trip a year. Fishing was very, very good on the east shore not far from the park. The guys landed a bunch of real solid lake trout – fish ranging from 27″ to 29″. They landed 10 for the morning. Only one good fish lost – a great percentage by any standard. Fishing was best around 80′ to 85′ or so.
9/4 PM: Got a call on Saturday for some folks looking to get out today – so things worked out. At 1 pm I met Ron, Todd and Butch at the launch at Taughannock. They were a fun, funny bunch and I had a lot of laughs with them. The fishing near the park was terrific from the get-go with Ron landing a 29.5″ FAT laker that weighed 10lbs 10oz! That’s a fatty! Butch landed a small landlock and Todd also nailed a nice laker. The guys had some great action for around 1/2 hour to 45 minutes then things slowed. A few more fish were caught. Overall a very productive 1/2 day with everyone landing at least 2 fish and Todd having the hot hand with 3 or 4 nice ones boated. The T-Storms stayed away. Remember – “when in doubt, go out” – check the weather map, but don’t sit home and let bad weather forecasts dictate your fishing success.
9/5: Guided Florian and Alysa for the full day. It was a wet one out there! We started around 7 am and were likely the only boat to launch out of the park today, given that no trailers were in the park when I arrived and none were there when we pulled out (of Taughannock.) They’d originally wanted 2 one-half day trips – doing different techniques, but I could only schedule one trip. They pretty much learned to fish via trips at the Angling Zone and are into it! We’ve jigged Keuka Lake a couple times with good luck, but they wanted to do some casting.
We started with a little jigging w/o much action. One dink laker near AES. For bass I had them casting some tube jigs, dropshotting and working Superflukes. We worked on casting spinning gear and they got pretty good at it. Alysa managed a couple solid 14″+ largemouths on the day and a couple dink perch dropshotting. Florian nabbed his first (small) smallmouth on a tube jig. We were able to iron out some casting and presentation bugs, which was nice. Florian knows how to cook professionally and wanted some lakers. He did a great job landing 4 nice ones in succession. So despite getting soaked, we had a productive day with some new techniques learned and plenty of good eating to be had.
Over the past 7 years I typically have moved a lot of my laker guiding to Keuka Lake from Sept – November. I now live a bit further from this lake. I will still be doing some trips here – the laker fishing is great, as is the bass/pickerel action (along with a rare bonus pike.) But I plan on doing more fishing on Cayuga Lake for lakers later into the season. Although many fish move south towards Taughannock and spawn in October, I expect some good action from non-spawners and late-spawning fish further north. We’ll see how things pan out. Keuka trips will have a fuel surcharge added from here on in. Fuel surcharges are no longer necessarily for Otisco Lake since I’m much closer now. I expect good fishing on Owasco Lake too, so we shall see! I’m very excited about my newfound proximity to different launches and lakes now – many slightly “alien areas” will now be filled in with detail.