Reports

Guided Ken and his friend Derek for a full day of fishing starting around 8:45 am.  Going back a week ago, we had no idea where we were going to fish today.  After my tough Seneca trip for salmon on Friday, we ruled Seneca Lake out.  Derek was out with me back in December of 2019 and we had a terrific day on lake trout working bladebaits and jigs in shallow, so that’s what he was set on doing.  I tried to push them towards deep lake trout jigging due to the consistency of the fishing, but they were set on shallow casting.  My last trip out here was on December 26th, and the fishing was pretty slow.  I must admit that I was looking forward to getting back out here and checking things out, especially on the north wind, which is a great wind to fish Cayuga Lake’s southern third on, as long as it isn’t too strong.

Derek has a lot of confidence in the blade-baits, so that’s what he stayed with.  Ken hadn’t caught any fish on a tube jig before, so we wanted to make sure he became competent at working that pattern.  Today was a battle of the lures for the guys.  Derek nabbed a 21 or 22″ lake trout in short order on the blade.  He missed another soon thereafter.  I think he caught a second laker before Ken struck back with the tube jig and nailed a nice 29″ fish shallow.  The morning bite was good but slowed after maybe 90 minutes.  We moved around a bit and a few more fish were hooked.  Derek nabbed a small salmon and a small rainbow later in the day.  Ken caught a nice 20″+ rainbow on the tube.  A couple of good fish were lost and another laker or two was landed.  All in all, a great day with a couple of great guys.  Ken brought a few good cigars along and that was a treat.

One nice takeaway from today’s fishing was that we encountered a fair number of young landlocked salmon today. Not the massive numbers I saw back around 2014, but more than I’ve seen over the past two to three years, so we should see more salmon this, and next year if they continue to do well.  We are sure due for a good salmon year on Cayuga Lake!

It’s also nice to see rainbows around.  Rainbow fishing on Cayuga Lake hasn’t been better since I moved down here in 1995.  The guys have seen and caught some nice lakers and rainbows from shore over the past couple of months.

Water level is still very good.  Water temps ran around 40 degrees.  A few other boats were out today along with a couple of shore-fishermen.  Looks like we’re due for a snowstorm on Monday night going into Tuesday.  We’ll see what happens, but overall a great, fun day on Cayuga Lake.