Reports

Guided Kan and his son Jonathon for 1/2 day in the AM starting around 6:45. They were after pike. We worked a lot of areas today with spoons, swimbaits and jerkbaits. Fishing wasn’t easy by any means, but a few pickerel followed in some lures and Kan nailed one, then he got a 25″ pike. We kept at it and Jon finally hooked up with a 37″er. Later on he managed another large fish at 34″. The pike fishing is better than last year but not what I was seeing 10 or even 5 years ago. Historically the pike fishing has fluctuated a bit on this lake. Last year we had tough fishing around the southern portions of the lake, but found decent numbers of good fish further north. Things change. I am scheduled to guide the northern end of this lake for pickerel/pike soon and that should help clarify how fishing is further north. It’s a tough balance here, since the City of Ithaca filled the wetlands on the south end of the lake decades ago, we have less spawning habitat (and of course no swimming on Cayuga’s south end.) If we get high lake levels during the late winter/early spring, the pike can have a good spawn, but lampreys are able to swim up the inlet and spawn. So the low lake levels help the trout/salmon, but hurt the pike. I guess we can’t have it all, unless you go to Seneca!

I brought some fly-gear and other tackle and after dropping the guys off I went to check on salmon fishing. Water temps are great for trout inshore – 51 to 52 degrees. At Taughannock I quickly managed a 19″ landlocked and a dink. I had some follows from larger fish in a couple other areas. So I’m thinking that we may have a good year on Cayuga Lake for salmon. It will be interesting to see how these Sebago strain fish do in the lake. And life in the area is never better than when both Cayuga and Seneca Lakes are good for salmon!

For shore fishermen out there, now is the prime time to fish stream mouths – even if the creeks are nearly dry, you may find that some fish are hanging out. It’s also a good time to try around stocking sites. Browns will hone in on those areas.