Reports

Fishing continues to be good to downright superb in the region.  Hopefully I’ll be able to guide soon –  once the Governor lets us back to work.  Perhaps by April 6th – we’ll see.  Right now the vast – and I mean vast majority of coronavirus cases are in the New York City area – and there are a lot there for various reasons I won’t get into here.  As you go west of Albany the number of cases diminishes markedly.  Many counties have less than 10 documented cases as of this writing at 10:20 pm on 3/26.  Cayuga and Cortland counties – two counties bordering me have two cases each.  A doctor friend in Rochester told me that they are “…seeing a few cases.”   Monroe County (Rochester area) is up to 139 cases confirmed.  The county has close to 750,000 residents!  So not a whole lot of coronavirus going on at this point over there – maybe 1/10th of 1% at this point in time.  There is talk that elementary schools will start up in Tompkins County within a couple weeks.  We shall see.

3/25 Cayuga Lake out of Long Point:  Fishing was fantastic for me and my buddy Todd, who also brought along his 7 year old son Dalton.  Todd is a good pal of mine and guided up in Alaska for a number of summers.  We had the lake to ourselves – we started at around 11:30 am and by the time we finished fishing around 4 pm only one other boat had launched out of the park.  We hammered lake trout using bladebaits, swimbaits and tubes.  We caught some real dandies – the best fish being Todd’s 31+1/2″ slob he caught on a tube jig after I handed the rod to him some he could take a few casts while I wrapped things up.  We had a few bonus fish as well – I landed a 19″ smallmouth on a bladebait and Todd took 2 really nice pickerel running 25″ and 26″ long (he just missed a third one too.)  We kept four lakers and a couple had small gobies in them.  Overall we landed around 25 fish (including the pickerel and bass.)

The lakers just look gorgeous on Cayuga Lake.  I’ve never seen colors like these on Cayuga Lake lake trout before.  Lamprey scars are virtually non-existent.

One interesting item of note I wanted to mention here is that many of us that are on the lakes often see interesting and uncommon birds out on and around the water.  I’m so wrapped up in fishing and other interests that I really don’t think much about what I’m seeing or try to look up the birds in order to identify them. On March 5th I guided Orin, who happens to work at Cornell at the Ornithology Lab.  I asked him about rare birds in the area and he gave me a list of birds that have been sighted around the lake that usually aren’t found anywhere near here.  Some of these are species that birders would drive a few hours for just to get a glimpse of.  Here’s a list of what he gave me.  Look them up if you’re interested – maybe you’ve seen a few of them!

Black Headed Gull

Tufted Duck

Iceland Gull

Glacous Gull

Cackling Goose

Ross’s Goose

Lake Ontario out of Oswego Harbor 3/26:  Had a lot of fun out here today with my buddy Mike starting around 11:30 am or so.  We did a bit of casting with gear and them some fly-casting.  A handful of boats were out – no apparent charters, just recreational guys.  Mike started us off with a follow from a rainbow that was maybe an 18″ fish.  Shortly thereafter I hooked and landed a hard fighting 26″ chunky brown on a bladebait.  I also caught a nice smallmouth bass on a tube jig – though it didn’t fight much in the 40 degree water.

We did some casting in another area and Mike lost a solid brown.  He also had some hits on flies.  We both casted streamers for awhile until the conditions got bad for it.  We’ll be back here soon after more trout on the fly as well as on casting gear.  Trolling is very effective on Lake Ontario for browns (as it is elsewhere) but fun fishing can be had casting if you apply yourself.  If you can fish the Finger Lakes well for browns, fishing the Great Lakes is just a matter of needing to pay more attention to detail. It’s bigger water and there’s more to cover, but a brown trout is a brown trout no matter where it is!  Keep that in mind.