Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 6/6 + Skaneateles Lake 6/7 AM
Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 6/6: Guided Rick and his son Ian for a 1/2 day starting around 7:30 am. I woke up early and was concerned about the incoming fog, but it cleared before we started fishing. Winds were blowing around 10 to 12 mph out of the north when we started. The lake trout fishing was the best I’ve seen all year. The guys did a great job (1st time jigging) and managed to land 10 solid fish. Rick dropped a couple good ones early due to putting too much pressure on them. Average fish ran 25″ long and we had 3 wild ones in the bunch. Largest was around 28″ or 29″ if I remember correctly and wild. Most fish were in 50′ to 75′ or so. Some bait was around too. We saw a troller nab a nice sized silvery fish right off the point. You can bet that there are plenty of browns and some salmon in the area!
After the trip I decided to give the perch fishing a go. My friend (rod builder) Mike Canavan has been doing well off his dock. The perch fishing is fantastic on Cayuga Lake right now. You can’t go wrong anywhere from Long Point down to AES and likely beyond down to Myers. On the west shore, Dean’s Cove down to Sheldrake is usually also great this time of year. Taughannock and Frontenac Points too. This is great no-brainer perch fishing. No need for electronics. No need to have an assortment of bait – none of that typical Seneca Lake stuff. Just get some minnows, worms or plastic grubs (which are what I used) and go to it. Within 2 hours I had landed 20 keeper perch ranging from 8″ to 10″. All came from shallow water. Many are fat too, feeding on the heavy goby population. There are a ton of dinks to weed through as well. In addition I also had a laker around 8lbs as well as a solid brown chase in my perch set-up!
Skaneateles Lake 6/7 AM: Guided Rick, whom I also took out last year. Rick lives along one of my favorite stretches of the lake for bass and he fishes it often (he has a place on the lake) so we fished elsewhere so he could experience some different areas. I had him work tube jigs and after a 1/2 hour or 45 minutes he started getting some good action, mostly from rock bass but he also managed at least a half dozen smallmouths up to around 17″ or more. One jumbo perch made it into the live-well along with some of the better quality rockies. I showed him some laker jigging and he managed a 17″ or 18″ keeper as well as a cigar sized dink. The bass fishing wasn’t as hot as the previous two weeks, but it wasn’t bad. Some fish are likely starting to spawn given that we had a full moon earlier this week. Kudos to the parking attendant for closing the parking lot early. It was great not having to navigate past haphazardly parked trailers, though a couple people parked their vehicles as if they had a BAC around 2%. There’s always a few in every bunch. Water temps were in the mid-50s (56 to be exact is what I had.)