Cayuga Lake out of Myers Park 7/9 AM
Guided Matt and Mike for a 1/2 day starting just after 7 am. We always have a lot of fun joking around on the boat and today was no exception – it was a barrel of monkeys out there. Fishing was fair to good at times. No great numbers but Matt managed to land 5 or 6 solid fish. Mike had the same number of hits and lost a nice one but for whatever reason was unable to stick ’em good today. Same basic depths and everything as recently. Best fish was around 25″. We had two wild ones in the mix too, which is always nice. I’d say fishing was a touch better than yesterday. It should pick up again shortly with the cooler nights and algae hopefully disappearing.
As an added note, a couple of tools I find really helpful in my fishing are as follows:
The Berkley Hotwire is a great little gadget. It runs on AAA batteries and enables the user to melt the tag ends of any knots being tied. So for example when I have a leader on my braid, I can melt the ends of the double-uni knot down moreso that I’d be able to clip them down. I don’t have to worry about the tag ends backing back through the knot and making it fail. With the melted down tags, the line glide much better through my rod guides while either playing a fish or making a cast. Great little tool.
I do a lot of filleting in my job. Nothing is worse than a dull fillet knife. My clients are often impressed at how quickly I can clean a fish – having a sharp knife is the key (along with a lot of experience.) Sharpening stones and sticks can be tricky to use without the right training. I know my years in Boy Scouts didn’t help me much. The sharpeners that come with the knives are worthless. My clients Dave, his sons Dapper Dan and Steve suggested the Work Sharp Ken Onion edition sharpening station to me – actually I think Steve was the man. Anyways, it’s an amazing little machine. It’s available from Cabelas and has a preset adjustable angle guide and various belts that can be quickly changed. It’s kind of like a mini-belt sander that you can use to put a professional edge on all kinds of knives and even some other tools. Now all my old fillet knives (and I have a lot of them) are as good as new again. It runs under $140 if I remember right and will pay for itself in short order if you use and dull your knives a lot.