Cayuga Lake out of Myers 5/3
Guided a full day with Kurt and his friend Jim. The goal was to get some salmon and browns with lakers as a backup. Casting/fly-casting continues to be challenging for us on Cayuga Lake. Large swaths of warm water make things more of a troller’s game at times, though perseverance with casting can pay off.
Conditions were fairly calm to start and we tried one area for salmon without luck. We went to laker jigging and Kurt nabbed a solid 27″ fish that was probably over 7lbs. It had been eating some alewives – it spit one up in the boat and had a couple in its stomach when I filleted it. Jim lost one laker. I marked decent numbers of lakers but they were not very aggressive. Not sure if that was a full moon deal or what.
We tried a milk-run of 4 or 5 areas without seeing a salmon or brown, so we wound up fishing the large expanse of warm water. It didn’t take long before Jim had a hold of a decent salmon – maybe 17″ or 18″ but it got off. Kurt had a follow from a smaller fish shortly thereafter, but action was fairly slow. The weather got rainy and we encountered a bit more wind and wound up trying another few areas until we wound up where we started. Kurt lost a decent fish and then that was it for the day.
Casting and fly-casting for landlocked salmon can be very productive at times, but sometimes it feels more like musky fishing or west-coast steelhead fishing – lots of searching for a few opportunities. We only saw one other boat out fishing and they were casting too. No trollers out that we could see today. The fishing hasn’t been as good as last year for the most part. I will be spending a lot of time on the water in the next few weeks (I also plan on hitting other waterways) so hopefully will see what’s up.