Cayuga Lake out of Dean’s Cove 3/29
Got out today from around 2 pm till 7. Started out with a lot of Northeast wind and cold temps! I spent at least 3 hours combing the north end flats of the lake from 90′ to 200’+ of water. I used my electronics plus did a lot of probing with various jigs. I found very few fish – a mark here and a mark there. Most of the time – nothing. I found a little bait in 220′ of water. Water temps in the main lake are 37, but I found some incoming creeks with water up to 42 degrees. The water level is quite high – about 4″ from going over the docks at Deans. I had one hit on the day. I spent an hour or two working shallower water hoping for a laker – no luck there.
Last year at this time the fishing was much better and lakers were anywhere from 90′ to about 150′. What’s going on? My guess is that fish wintered very deep this year. In Lake Ontario there’s been a recent trend with alewives wintering deeper every year. This may be due to large numbers of quagga mussels in deep water drawing nutrients down towards the bottom. I don’t know. Obviously I can’t cover too much water in a few hours – so there are maybe large concentrations of fish somewhere and I just didn’t find them. That may be a more likely scenario. It may take a full day or two to find the fish.
The day was tough with regards to conditions – it was cold, choppy and windy. That didn’t help my search. I will probably spend more time on Seneca over the next couple weeks and give these Cayuga fish a chance to move in and hopefully show themselves! We know the fish are around.