Reports

Did a laker jigging trip with Tom and his friend Tom. Tom has a place on Cayuga Lake and has been working on some laker jigging over the past few seasons with mixed results. The goal today was to learn the technique’s fine points and try to catch some fish. The catching could have been better today. I liked the sun in the forecast, but the “winds gusting to 30 mph out of the south” didn’t appeal to me much. But we figured we could dodge the winds with an early start, and by motoring N. of Stony Point. The winds were mild N. of the point for about 5 minutes this AM! Within short order they were cranking and we had cold and rough conditions.

I did the best with boat control I could but things were hard today. Fish are really scattering with laker friendly temperatures throughout the water column. There are lakers in 85′ and lakers in 140′. My depthfinder works best at slow motoring speeds, but with the chop we had, not getting on plane results in soaked anglers. Despite all this, Tom managed to hook a fish as we were drifting. It got off, but was a start. Another fish was missed. Finding and staying on bottom was a challenge today with the depth and drift.

The winds actually diminished a bit and we were able to work out deeper. Eventually Tom hooked and landed a fat laker around 23″ that we kept. It was loaded with alewives – maybe 6 of them in its stomach. Perhaps the fish fed during the full moon phase over the past couple days – I don’t know. But we wound up marking quite a few fish and having very little luck with them. One or two salmon were chasing and hitting jigs lightly too. Water temp was 53. My buddy Mike fished pike with his nephew further south and they had fairly tough fishing as well, landing 3 nice ones.

cayuga lake Deep Jigging Northern Pike