Reports

Water levels on Cayuga Lake are about a foot below summer pool, according to the Canal System Chart.

https://www.canals.ny.gov/waterlevels/netdata/cayuga-levels.pdf

This is a good chart to have bookmarked.  There are charts available for Seneca and Oneida Lakes as well.   By taking notes on lake-levels when you launch, you’ll have an idea of what to expect.  I know how deep I like the lake to be when I launch at Myers and all I have to do is glance at the chart to know whether it’s doable.  Launching is a cinch and should be lake-wide.

I guided Jack today, who joined me last month as well.  We got underway at 11 am.  He fishes until he catches a limit of nice fish then he’ll maybe catch and release a couple, then call it a day. He caught his limit of nice lake trout in about 2 1/2 hours today, with his two best fish being 29″ and 30.5″ wild fish. It was the first time I’d been out up here in a few weeks, so we took our time trying to locate trout.

As is often the case this time of year, fish were fairly scattered (not in a bad way) from 120′ to 150′.  You can do well fishing any depth in this range.  I didn’t even look shallower or deeper, since the few fish we were finding were generally pretty aggressive.  As I do more trips up here, I’ll get them dialed in a bit more.  Jack’s 5 fish hit 5 different jig colors today – we had fish on white, white/chartreuse tail, Arkansas Shiner, Alewife and black.  One fish was dropped and Jack had one other “bump”.

The weather looks great this week for the rest of my trips.  Sunday is open for trips, but the weather forecast isn’t looking as good as it was a few days ago.  The long-range forecasts’ accuracy keeps improving among the weather channels like the National Weather Service.  They are much more accurate than 10 years ago as far as I can tell!