Reports

Fishing has been heating up for us on Cayuga Lake lately.  Action was fair to good on Friday, very good to excellent on Saturday and downright superb on Sunday.  It’s another August on Cayuga Lake!  Water level and conditions remain excellent.  Clarity is very good.  Water temps are in the low 70s on the surface.  Bait and fish abound lake wide with bonus rainbows and salmon around.  Like 2020, we aren’t seeing many brown trout this year but some are around.  You can’t have it all.

8/6:  Guided Greg for a full day.  We tried some areas for browns without much luck.  Greg had a couple follows from nice fish in the 4 to 5lb range.   He caught a few lakers in the morning.  He wanted to get a few lakers for a friend to smoke for him, so we focused on those later in the morning.   About an hour before the end of our trip, the lakers turned on and Greg was able to get what he wanted.  He wound up with around 6 or 7 nice fish landed.

8/7:  Today was a full day trip with Mike – who was celebrating his 17th (I believe) birthday.  He was joined by his fishermen friends Noah and Colegin.   Mike was out with me once around 5 years ago on a brutally windy, cloudy October day.  We had very tough conditions and the guys (a different group apart from Mike) managed to eek out one small laker.  One that Mike caught.  His perseverance really impressed me then, and since that time he has become a very good angler.  The whole crew today was accomplished beyond their years and it showed.

Today made up for our tough trip in spades.  Fishing was excellent!  The guys started out with a superb bite.  We even had a couple triples along with many doubles.  Two nice salmon were landed – a 19″ and 24″er along with a nice 23″ wild rainbow.  Noah had the hot hand with wild lakers.  He nabbed four if I remember correctly for a total of five wild lakers on the day.  All fish were released.  Days like today become work for me.  It’s all I can do to keep everyone rigged and fishing along with trying to record accurate information for the DEC in my diary.  It’s weird having fin clip readings go in one ear and out the other.  Did I say left pectoral or right?  After a while, even the guys onboard are having trouble remembering something I just said seconds earlier.

The guys do some social media, so a lot of photos were taken today.  Sponsors love to see social media, but I am not a fan of it.  I don’t belong to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter.  I don’t have a YouTube channel.  Maybe someday when I cut back on guiding, but it’s not in the cards for me anytime soon.   It’s a big double edged sword and I’m very glad I didn’t grow up with that stuff or smartphones for that matter.  As kids my friends and I all said and did more dumb stuff than I’d like to remember and I’m thankful none of it got recorded!

It goes without saying that today was a very memorable trip!  The guys wound up landing 30 lakers to 29.5″, two salmon and the one rainbow.  We tried to get a brown but had no luck with them.

8/8:  Hard to believe that the fishing could get even better today, but it did.  Today was a half day trip with Jim, Brian and Todd.  The AM bite went on longer than it did yesterday.  No bonus fish today, but Jim managed a 32″ laker, so we had some bigger fish than yesterday.  No triples either but we did have a couple doubles if my memory serves me correctly.

The guys landed 29 lake trout on a half day trip.  Pretty spectacular!  Keep in mind, that this was exceptional fishing.  On average for two or even three people, I consider a 6 fish half-day a good day.   Anything beyond that is pretty darn great.   On Seneca Lake circa 2021, you might fish two days to jig up 6 fish.  Maybe a week!   Everything is relative.   For sheer numbers, April and early May, along with August through early September are usually best on Cayuga.  Late June also tends to excel on Cayuga Lake.  On Keuka Lake, October and November can be superb.  Owasco shines from late summer through fall.

Availability going forward:

I have started to give myself some days off, or else I won’t be getting any fishing in on my own!

September: 6th, 11th – 12th, 19th – 20th, 24th, 26th, 28th, 30th

October:  People ask me about pickerel on Cayuga’s north end – October and November tend to be great.  They are a lot of fun and are nearly pike-sized on Cayuga (certainly the size of smaller pike like you might catch on Black Lake or even Seneca at times.)  It’s great sport for people that want a lot of action or would like more experience catching fish on lures.  You always have a shot at a northern pike or good largemouth on Cayuga in October/November.

Most of October is available apart from the 2nd and 27th.