Cayuga Lake out of Myers Park 4/21 – 22
Guided Mark I. for two full days back to back. Usually we space out our trips but the unseasonably cold weather has made good fishing days hard to come by. Fishing wasn’t easy by any means for landlocked salmon.
4/21: Met Mark at the launch at 10 am. My buddy Mike and his girlfriend Sue arrived at the same time. They decided to fish lake trout first then chase salmon. We focused on salmon, basically casting with gear until the wind came up and conditions became more suitable for fly-fishing. We wound up sticking with the gear for the most part. We saw a nice rainbow in one area but it showed no interest. In another area Mark had a hold of a nice brown trout but the hook eventually pulled out. Mark managed a solid 21″ salmon a little bit later but that was it. Mike and Sue did well with the lakers and later on Sue managed a 25″ salmon on a swimbait. Fishing was tough with cold water in most areas and then the wind really came up – gusting into the upper teens at times.
4/22: We expected better fishing today with the stable weather and decided to start with the lakers. Laker jigging has been really good in the mid-lower lake over the past two years with the presence of round gobies. The lakers were gobbling good and Mark had a very solid morning landing 6 nice fish up to 28 1/2″. We had one wild fish. All the lakers were very clean i.e. no signs of lamprey hits. 100′ to 150′ produced for us. Overall the bigger lakers are up the lake around Long Point/Deans Cove north, where they are averaging closer to 27″. Most lower lake fish have been 20″ to 22″ or so.
Salmon fishing was a challenge. Despite conditions which I love – north winds and sun, a lot of salmon are still orienting towards the bottom of the lake, clearly feeding on gobies. In one area Mark had some hits and follows and landed a fat 18.5″ salmon. Another area produced a half hour of decent activity. Mark nabbed a 21″ salmon, an 18″ brown (that jumped really high!) and his personal best salmon (on the fly that is – he landed a bigger one laker jigging a year or two ago), a 26+1/2″ beauty that jumped four times in a row. After that he had another hit/follow from a smaller fish and that was it. We got lucky being in the right place at the right time. Fish all came on olive woolly buggers. The brown trout and smaller salmon were clean, the bigger ones had signs of lamprey (including one live lamprey that came up on the 21″ salmon.) We released all fish today apart from one laker destined for dinner. Overall fishing was tough today and I talked to another 3 boats whom did not have much if any action. I think it will take some more warm days/warm water before alewives move up and these fish start orienting more towards the surface. We’ll see. Good numbers of salmon, browns, rainbows and lakers are out there.