Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 5/21
I’d just arrived from Phoenix at around 6 pm yesterday when I received a message from Jamie looking for a 1/2 day trip tomorrow. His scheduled guide had some mechanical issues and suggested they give me a call. Jet lag be damned and I got the boat ready to roll. It was time to get the 2013 Crestliner ready to fish for this season. Thus far I’ve been running my old boat and it’s been running great. We met at around 8:30 am due to my fatigue. I did warn Jamie on the uncertainty of the conditions, but he was ready to roll.
Cayuga Lake is high and there’s still some debris laden discolored (i.e. murky) water around. It’s a great color for spring browns and salmon, but not what we want for laker jigging. We searched a lot of depths and found very few lakers anywhere. The most we marked were from around 120′ to 140′. I’m seeing the least amount of bait I’ve ever seen on Cayuga Lake thus far, this deep into the season. I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of bait around – but I’m not finding much.
Things started out alright with Jamie’s dad David nailing a nice 27″ laker. The fish had a healed lamprey wound and was in average condition. He had another hit soon thereafter, but then we didn’t do much for awhile. A run towards Sheldrake resulted in a solid, heavy hookup for Jamie, but the fish got off. Afterwards, he landed a very small laker that measured 14″. Maybe one or two other hits were had, but that was it. I’m cautiously optimistic about the laker fishing this year on Cayuga. I marked good numbers of fish (though they weren’t hitting well) last time I was out. This time we didn’t see much, but the water did have some color to it, which can slow things down. I can guarantee that I’ll be spending more time on Owasco Lake this year than in years past. Hopefully things will settle out on Cayuga Lake and the fishing will return to its usual great form. Water temps on the surface ranged from 47 to 53 degrees.