Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 7/2
Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 7/2: I had just about finished up a long run of fishing trips – eleven in a row on four different lakes if you include my two outings with Terry on Seneca and Onondaga, and was ready for a day off. Nothing like a day off right before the 4th. Smooth sailing – good fishing and good weather along with a lot of great people. Well, when life looks like easy street….
I pulled into the launch at 6:25 am to meet Dominiek and his son Herbert and whaddya know, my right side boat tire looks tilted. Bearings! For real??? I just gave the tires a good spin literally a week ago (as per my recommendations a couple weeks ago) and they were quiet. How did they just fail so quickly? Well there were a couple signs. I did have a little light grinding when I spun them a month or so ago but I chalked it up to being the brakes. Wrong! But I didn’t hear any noise last week when we spun them again. Two days ago I pulled into my apartment driveway and noticed the bearing buddy had come off. That was strange. It was perfect for, oh seven years. I didn’t notice any heat coming off of the hub. I replaced the buddy and figured I was good to go. Wrong!
So now what do I do? I have a full day trip ahead of me. The July 4th holiday is two days away. Long Point Marina will be crazy busy! I can’t leave the trailer here with the boat on it or have the boat just tied off floating around in the marina. Certainly not on July 4th. I carry spare hubs packed with grease and good to go with bearings. But I can’t just swap out the hub because my newer trailer has brakes! I would need special tools to do the work and it would be a pain in the butt. So I need to get a flatbed truck that can haul an 18′ boat with a pretty darn wide trailer to my trailer guy. I called around and either nobody had a flatbed truck and if they did it wasn’t big enough; some places were too busy and one just didn’t want to do the job. Except for one place (thankfully!) – Fingerlakes Towing and Auto Recovery aka Fingerlakes Transport. If you do any boating in the eastern Finger Lakes Region, put this number in your telephone: (315) 253-7506. Hopefully you’ll never need it, but if you do you’ll be glad you did. Here is their website: http://www.fingerlakestowing.com/ The truck bed had just enough width to handle my wide trailer. David (the owner) has a 21′ flatbed. He told me he treats every car or boat he tows as if it were his own. After watching him carefully load and secure, transport and then unsecure and unload my boat, I would agree 100%. He did a great job and I would use him again in a heartbeat.
So how was the fishing? Action was slow but somewhat steady all day long. Four nice fish were landed and another four or five solid hookups dropped between around 7 am and 2pm. There are fish all over Cayuga Lake from the power plant on north to Levanna, and we worked most of it today. The wind came up out of the west at around 2:30 and in the next 10 minutes the guys landed three additional fish, including the two best of the day – a couple around 27″ to 28″. Yes – the conditions make a huge difference in fishing success no matter what species you’re after. Not just the day’s conditions, but the hourly and sometimes even smaller increments.
So a crappy start to the day ended up great. And now I know exactly who to call if I ever need a flatbed to tow my boat!