Reports

Guided Mike and his daughters Cassidy and Caitlyn for a 1/2 day AM trip starting at 6:30 am.  During the duration of the algae bloom, I’ve moved all of my trips over to Owasco and Seneca Lakes.  I will be on Keuka later this month as well.  That being said, Mike rented a place on Cayuga Lake this week.  He’s been fishing up here for decades for bass and over the past decade for lake trout.  I’ve guided him a handful of times over the past ten years.  He knew the deal and wanted to see how the algae bloom fished as well as get some tips for fishing here this week, so that’s what we did.

Well, you may ask, how did the algae bloom fish?  Not good.  We had our first zero of the year on lake trout.  The line between success and failure when fishing is often very thin.  We had some hits and a handful of aggressive fish chasing.  We easily could have had three or four fish if they had been a tad more cooperative!  We came close to having a decent day, given what I was seeing on my fish finder. Caitlyn hooked up and fought a fish right to the leader but the hook pulled out before we saw it!  Bummer!  Visibility north of Long Point is about 1′ to 2′.  It’s bad.  South of Long Point in shallow (like less than 10′ of water,) there’s about 3′ to 4′ of clarity.  Out over deeper water, visibility is poor.  My friend Todd was out and managed a couple of fish in mid-lake areas.  We were starting to get some hits over there before we called it a day.  Trollers should be faring better and somebody usually manages to catch a few fish, but having been on Owasco and Seneca Lakes over the past 10 days or so, I’d have to say that comparatively, Cayuga Lake is fishing much worse than the other two.

Caitlyn had her fish hit an Arkansas Shiner colored Shaker.  I believe that we had a hit or two on white as well.  Black didn’t fish well for us today, nor did chartreuse.  These fish will surely have their feeding windows, but with blooms they are very unpredictable.