Reports

Guided Darren and his wife Krista today for a 1/2-day-trip starting just after 7:15 am.  I picked them up at Taughannock, where they were staying.  It was a last-minute booking and I informed Darren about the possibility of difficult fishing due to the algae bloom.  He wasn’t phased by it – they were checking out at noon and just wanted to get on the lake and do some fishing rather than drive over to a different lake.  That worked fine for me.  I certainly like seeing what the conditions are on Cayuga Lake as the bloom unfolds.

First things first, the major storms that blew across the state yesterday pretty much left the Ithaca area unscathed.  That’s at least the third wave of storms in the past two months with the potential for heavy downpours and worse weather (tornado watches and other assorted storm damage) that have basically went around us.

The algae bloom is upon us in full force now, pretty much from end to end of Cayuga Lake.  I ran north past Sheldrake today and south below Crowbar and visibility was around 1′ to 2′ at best in most areas.  On Monday the bloom started, but we had a good 4′ of clarity.  Not today!

I took them to areas that I thought would have better visibility after the heavy south winds, but that wasn’t the case.  A lot of warm water had blown into those areas.  Overall today, the bite wasn’t great but it wasn’t awful.  Within maybe a half-an-hour Darren had a decent hit that got off.  Krista missed four fish in a row – including one pretty good hookup as well.  She had a lot of short hits today too. We had fish in numerous locations.  With weird weather like this, I’m sure a lot of fish were out suspended over deeper water as well, but that’s not my choice for jigging by any stretch.

A run south after a quick bathroom stop at Taughannock proved promising.  I had some good marks of fish.  Darren finally hooked up with his first drop of the good old white/chartreuse Shaker and they had some fish to take home for dinner.  I would have kept them out a bit longer but they realized that they had to check out of Taughannock Farms before noon, so we headed back to Taughannock and tried just a couple drops on the way back in.