Cayuga Lake out of Long Point 7/6 + 7/7
7/6: Guided Rick and Gary for a full day starting bright and early, around 5:45 am. Fishing on the day was slow but steady. The guys managed to land 5 fish and lost a few as well. Fish ran to about 26″ long and FWIW we had a good little flurry of activity in around 115′ of water. Lampreys weren’t an issue. We found fish from Long Point north to Levanna, with no areas being particularly better than others. A run over to the Dean’s Cove area didn’t show much more. Unfortunately today (7/7) I realized that my nice Super Magnum Landing Net from Cabelas likely blew out of the boat on the ride back in. Perhaps some lucky jigger will snag themselves a nice net! Water temps are very warm on the surface – reaching around 82.
7/7: Guided Ron and Matt for the full day starting at 5:30 am. With these hot, muggy days it’s been nice getting on the water early and being done early. We had one fish near Stoney Point then ran south to Sheldrake and worked south from there. Fishing was a notch up from 7/6 with 10 solid fish landed up to 28″ and the last two coming just before we quit, at about 1:20 pm – so they hit all day today. And I managed without a net, which was a semi-dangerous or at least risky thing to do! But I was able to hand-land the fish without receiving a jig head to the hand or face, by being very careful. Two attached lampreys made it onboard, but overall most fish were clean. About 65′ to 110′ was best.
The guys from the past two days have been fishing with me since 2005 in the case of Rick and since around 2008 with Ron and Matt, and it’s really awesome seeing familiar faces on a fairly regular basis. We had a lot of fun on both days and all fish were released on both trips, which was nice. The laker population on Cayuga Lake is fairly balanced and selective harvest is the way to go these days. A large year class of fish is missing due to a stocking diversion that took place around 7 or 8 years ago when the Federal Hatchery had to destroy a bunch of lakers due to disease. Wild fish numbers on Cayuga remain low, hovering around8to 9 percent. Keep in mind that wild fish numbers on Cayuga were basically non-existent when the smelt population was high, prior to the mid-1990s, so at least we’re seeing some wild lakers. Boat traffic remains light on Cayuga Lake.