Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 10/31
Last year I was fishing Skaneateles Lake for trout and salmon with my flyrod around this time. Right now, conditions are fishing like mid-October. So my buddy Dave and myself shot over to Cayuga to check on pike. The lake was really rough when we showed up at 12:30 pm so we tried heading N. of Taughannock Point and we checked on lakers. We marked a few and had some smaller fish (salmon?) following our jigs/spoons but no hookups.
The lake calmed down and we ran south looking for pike. We worked a few of my top pike areas. Dave was in the zone and lost a big pike at the second place we tried. Then he landed a 27″ fish. I couldn’t buy a hit. Dave then landed a beauty – a 37″ hefty northern! It fought great! We took a few photos too. Dave missed one more and that was it for us. We tried a couple other places with no luck, but our time was running out.
Cayuga is fishing like Seneca did a few years ago – a few fish around and some are big. There’s no comparison with Seneca right now – Seneca is much better. Pretty much every weedy area on Seneca holds fish. On Cayuga you need to cover a lot more water and fish thoroughly.
My new Fenwick rods and REVO STX reel with a 7:1 retrieve fished great. I’ve been using Fenwicks all season long. I don’t get paid to promote these products, but I’ve been impressed with them. I used to love the old Fenwick HMG rods back in the 1970s and early 1980s. They were classic. I ignored Fenwick for a long time after that, mainly buying Bass Pro Shops Extreme Rods and an occasional All-Star or Loomis. The new HMXs are some of the most reasonably priced rods out there. They are one of the few companies that produce a Heavy Action spinning rod. The baitcasters have rod handles that are amongst the longest for a production rod – they are perfect for vertical jigging. I don’t know of a better rod for the money than the Fenwick HMX rods. HMGs are very nice and the Techna AV rods are awesome as well. The HMX rods are superior (IMO) to St. Croix Premier Rods, BPS Extreme Rods and many of the Castaway Rods. The HMX rods are lighter and more sensitive and yet stronger than the aforementioned rods. When a Fenwick Rod is labeled as being able to handle 3/8 to 1 1/4 oz. lures, it HANDLES them. Many rods feel overloaded when I try to cast the higher range of their rated lures. Not the Fenwicks!