Reports

Guided Dave and his sons Steve and “Dapper” or “Not dismal” Dan for a full day on Saturday and a half day on Sunday. The forecasts didn’t look too good for the weekend and Dave and Dan had their apprehensions about the weather. My adage is “When in doubt, go out.” Dave’s is “I’ll let the weather spoil my fishing but not the weatherman.” Both applied for this weekend. Despite gloom and doom forecasts of rain and thunderstorms with upwards of a half an inch of rain on Saturday and rain today we had a little on the water yesterday and none experienced today until I left the State Park having completed today’s trip.

Fishing was fantastic both days! Just tremendous with a capital “T” as Dick Vitale would say. Working 85′ to 100′ FOW paid off with 43 lake trout landed yesterday. Thirteen of them were over 28″ long. Wild fish ran about 20% yesterday as well. DEC says around 11% are wild and they are probably right, but we hit quite a few both days. We had 26 fish today with more dinks (if you can call a 20″ to 22″ fish a “dink”) in the mix today.

No live lampreys or fresh wounds on any fish. They hit colors from white to chartreuse and even a purple Reaper knock-off which I had never caught fish on wound up landing the best fish of the trip for “Not so dismal” Dan – a 31 1/2″ beauty. The fishing here is really world-class in terms of numbers and average size. Lake Champlain is comparable, but you don’t get any wild fish over there and lampreys are worse. Canadian and Alaskan waters may hold an occasional monster laker but you aren’t catching massive numbers of 5 to 10lb fish there day-in and day-out. At least not that I know of. And those northern giants take upwards of 40 years to get that big. You aren’t taking any or many of those home for dinner or the wall without damaging the fishery.

A lot of boats were out today. Not sure if there was a derby of some sort but it was a great weekend to be on the lake.

cayuga lake