Cayuga Lake North Section 8/16
Guided Mark for a full day today starting around 7:30. He loves to fly-fish and we set up for pickerel today near Canoga. The bite and fishing weren’t easy. Mark actually foul-hooked a decent pickerel in short order. That was strange. He landed a chunky largemouth around 14″ that had two other bass following it. Another pickerel around 22″ gobbled a chartreuse streamer on a sinking line. The fish weren’t super active today. He had a few other hits from pickerel, but the fish really needed coaxing to hit. Fly-fishing can also be tough when fish are buried in the vegetation. That’s why I like early and late season fishing.
Mark really enjoys gar on the fly, so we checked a couple areas out. Water temps were just around 71 to 72, which usually isn’t easy gar fishing. We found a large school of gar and he worked them for awhile. Eventually a few fish started showing some mild interest in the rope flies. A Type 6 Full Sinking Line produced a couple nice gar for Mark. The gar look like the bass, in that both appear to be very well fed this year.
We had a little time to check on laker jigging. I marked a few, but no grabs. As I dropped off Mark at Dean’s Cove, I met Peter Ponds, a BASS fisherman on the Elite Series tour. A few savvy bassers have been getting acquainted with the lake this week, before heading to Lake St. Clair for the finale of the 2013 Elite Series. He’s a nice guy and I wish him well. By the way, if anyone thinks being a pro-bass fisherman is a piece of cake, I have some news for you. It’s work, pure and simple.
P.S. Pete did mention seeing a chunky 5lb largemouth near an area of hydrilla – and it wasn’t on the lake’s south end. He knows his weeds – so it’s pretty clear that the hydrilla has spread throughout Cayuga Lake. So we now have gobies and hydrilla. I don’t think hydrilla will be any worse than the milfoil, despite the gloom and doom. But we shall see. A friend of mine said it’s been in the inlet for a good 5 years, so the eradication efforts are probably a bit late. Cayuga’s been spared the milfoil problems that Seneca has.