Reports

4/28:  Guided Joe and his wife Melissa for a 1/2 day trip today.  In a nutshell, fishing was slow.  We had cloudy skies and very tentative fish for most of the day.  Bite-windows were not very intense for what it was worth.  Melissa was a last minute substitution for Joe’s dad for the trip and she doesn’t fish much.  That being said, she had the hot hand (it was a trend with the wives over the last two trips!) and managed to land two nice lakers.  She lost one that hit right at the boat.  I filleted the fish that was kept for dinner and it was full of large alewives.  Anyhow, I tried my best to get Joe into fish and he had some hits but no cigar.  It was still a fun day on the water and I hope we get some revenge on these trout sometimes in the future.  No pics today.

4/29:  Guided Steve and Dave for a full-day trip starting at 8 am.  We were met at the launch with some thick fog!  We took our time getting out and I made sure to sound my horn frequently in order to alert other boaters of our presence.  I give everyone that was out there credit – boaters took their time and motored at a safe-speed.  No idiot behavior, which was nice for a change.  I remember one foggy Memorial Weekend Derby on Seneca Lake and I couldn’t say the same back then.  We had some real morons out there!

Fortunately the fog blew off in short order once we were just about where we wanted to start fishing.

Fishing remained slow in the low-light conditions.  We did pick up a few fish in short order once we started fishing, but it wasn’t what I’ve come to expect on Cayuga Lake.  Once the sun broke through around 11 am or noon, the bite got hot and heavy and the guys had a terrific afternoon bite. We got nicely into the double-digits and had some large and wild fish in the mix.  Most boats were off the lake by the time the fish got biting well for us.

4/30:  Today was Day 2 with Steve and Dave and our bite continued right where we left it!  Fishing was excellent!  Only a couple of boats were out today.  The forecast was for thunderstorms possible and rain likely.  We never had a drop of rain!  The rain and storms blew from the southeast to both the north and south of us.  You can’t beat that, but you also can’t count on it!  Terrific day – we had a double hooked and plenty of fish up to over 31″ brought to the net.  Depths ranged from 80′ out to 130′.  Lake surface temps ranged from 43 to 46 or so.  It’s still pretty darn cold a few feet down.

I still have decent availability in May for those interested!   Pike, Tiger Musky, Pickerel and Walleye season opens tomorrow, May 1st.  

Steve and his wife Christine joined me years ago for some pike fishing out of Watkins Glen – it was a terrific day of fishing with all of them caught on the fly.  Just prior to the pandemic we had some fun lake trout fly-fishing on Cayuga Lake back when the gobies were really swarming the shallows.  I never have to worry about his fly-casting or his wife’s;  they both practice a lot and do a lot of salt-water fly-fishing.