Cayuga Lake out of Myers 5/17 midday
Guided Todd for 1/2 day starting just after 9 am. We had a slow, difficult day of fishing. Cayuga Lake is very muddy from the south end northwards to up past Myers. There is also a lot of debris in the lake – mostly small to medium sized stuff. There is a ton of small stuff out there. The mud is just that – mud; there’s lots of water out there with very little visibility/transparency. Some of it has the greyish “glacial looking” stain to it. There are large areas of warm water too. Plenty of water is out there in the 47 to 51 degree range. This water will move up large amounts of baitifsh. It also will scatter trout and salmon far and wide. In terms of consistent casting/fly casting for trout and salmon, that window is pretty much closed – not that we had any consistent fly-fishing anytime at all through the winter. The last great casting I experienced here was around mid-March. Once the nearshore laker bite dissipated, the fishing in general got tougher, even though we were taking browns and salmon fairly consistently along with the lakers.
We tried pike/pickerel casting to start with no action. We did see a large pickerel cruise by, but it had no interest in our presentation. We did a good amount of casting for trout/salmon. That is where the lack of wind hurt us moreso than the muddy water. I also ran all the way up to Sheldrake (yes – we covered a lot of water in a half day!) in an effort to jig some lakers. Laker jigging was also very slow. Todd had two instances where he might have had a hit on bottom. I would bet that laker jigging is still good north of Long Point but further south it has been tough. We did mark fair numbers of fish in places but for the most part the screen was pretty sparse. While casting, Todd has one light hit from what was likely a stockie trout or salmon. That was it on the day. Hopefully tomorrow’s trip will show some improvement. Stay tuned…