Reports

Guided Brad along with his 13-year-old daughter Marley and his 9-year-old son Bryson for a 1/2-day trip.  They have a rental on Cayuga Lake along with a lot of other family members.  Cayuga Lake remains in very good condition.  Water fleas have been pretty much non-existent.  The south winds did blow in a bunch of weedmats from the southern part of the lake, but they were fairly concentrated.

Our bite wasn’t easy today.  Bryson had a hold of the first lake trout and I don’t think he was ready, or expecting how much they can PULL!  He had his hands full with it and unfortunately it got off.  The first fish onboard was a dink if I remember right that Brad caught.  We actually had a couple fish that were sub-legal and barely legal which is quite rare on Cayuga Lake.  Bryson had no troubles landing one of the smaller trout. Brad landed a couple nice 26″ to 27″ trout (one wild) that we kept for the grill.  He landed another bigger fish that we let go.  Marley had a hold of a good fish that unfortunately got off after she had really done most of the hard work getting the fish worn down a bit.  She was quite ambidextrous and a late switch from a left-handed outfit to a right-handed outfit really smoothed out her technique.  I wish we’d tried both outfits earlier in the trip but she was so good with the lefty that I didn’t think of it until later.  As good as she was with the lefty, she was better with the righty!

I had a good time with the kids.  Sometimes guiding youngsters can be a challenge and even draining, but I’ve been very lucky to have some very mature youths out with me over the past month and it’s been a real pleasure.  I hold a lot of hope for the future when I encounter kids like Bryson and a few others whom I guided over recent years.

Temperature for lake trout remains deep and we had most of our action from around 115′ to 130′.  We didn’t encounter any other species today except perhaps a follow or two from what were likely small rainbows.  One hook-up was had at the leader – which could have been a bow or exuberant lake trout.  Bryson had quite a few good grabs today.   Once he gets older and more practice with techniques like this, he’ll be putting a hurting on the fish in the future!  Although we didn’t put many fish in the boat today, I’d still rate the fishing on Cayuga Lake as very good.  It should only get better through August.

I just wrapped up a good run of 11 trips in 10 days, so I now have some time to recuperate.  I’m hoping to do some fishing soon on some area waterways.  I have good availability for August although bookings are starting to roll in.  Now’s the best time for a good selection of dates!

DEC is wrapping up their field-work on Owasco Lake.  The crew out there mainly did lake trout netting and some forage netting.  Once I get a hold of the personnel involved, I’ll put up the pertinent information.  I’ll say one thing that’s for certain – that lake is loaded with rainbows and the browns are doing very well there.