Cayuga Lake out of Myers Part 12/19 + 12/20
Launched out of Myers with my buddy Mike for two days of spincasting and fly-casting. We fished a lot of areas on both shorelines and covered quite a few miles of lake.
On Wednesday we got underway around 11:15 am. We had solid lake trout action in shallow water. Most came on jigs of some sort. I caught one fly-fishing. We had double digit numbers of fish up to around 31″. Mike landed a 19.5″ dropback salmon that was very thin. It probably hadn’t been back in the lake for long. He dropped a fantastically colored really hard fighting (4+ jumps) brown that was likely in the 6 to 7lb range. But lakers were the story. They are all over the place. And they are fighting hard. People like the way lakers fight when caught vertical jigging as opposed to trolling. The fish we are catching via casting are fighting at a terrific level. On more than one occasion we thought we’d hooked large browns or foul hooked lakers only to find just another hard fighting laker on the line. They are running under the boat, away from the boat and straight down. They don’t stop fighting until we get the net under them. Credit “goby vigor!”
Today we were fishing just after 10:30 am. We fished completely different areas than yesterday. Still no sign of salmon and I did fish for them quite a bit. No browns either. But we had another double-digit laker day with around a dozen or more landed and many hits missed. Solid, chunky fish! Another day of incredible fights. I can’t imagine that there’s better nearshore lake trout fishing going on anywhere else in NY right now. Mike had a wild 29″ fish that gave him all he could handle. We both have just been shaking our heads in amazement with how strong these fish have been.
Very few boats are out fishing. We saw one other boat out today and one or two out yesterday. Salmon remain a mystery in Cayuga Lake. We’ve run into some in areas all over the lake over the past month, but no great numbers and no consistency. They just seem to show up all of a sudden, usually later in the winter and certainly by March/April, but it’s not what we’re used to on these lakes. Are they just scattered? Are numbers poor? Are they deeper or further offshore? Maybe uplake? There are millions of gobies all around the entire perimeter of Cayuga Lake. A salmon could be ANYWHERE in the lake eating them. Are the massive numbers of big lakers roaming shallow pushing the salmon out deeper or up shallower? I doubt shallower, but perhaps deeper. Time will tell, but this nearshore laker fishing is outstanding. It doesn’t get old! The fish are gorgeous and really give a great accounting of themselves on the end of the line. Check your knots!
Water temp are around 42/43. Lake level is low. Barely launchable at Myers but still doable. I’m not sure for how much longer, but then again we have upwards of an inch of rain in the forecast tonight.