Reports

Guided Jeremy and his friends Todd and Tim for a full day trip starting at around 8:30 am.  We were hoping to do a mixture of casting for pike and trout along with a little laker jigging depending on the conditions.  I generally do not do three persons trips for casting, but Jeremy has been out with me a few times before and insured me that the guys are used to fishing in close confines and it would work out.

For me, three people onboard casting can be diminishing returns.  Depending on the wind, boat control can be tough and that can put the third person in awkward casting positions.  We’d also be looking at having a lot of gear onboard, which can also be a hassle.  I have enough tackle as it is and rigging up a bunch of outfits for a third guy is not something I’ve planned for over the years, although I can cover it.  That being said, everything worked out fine.

Duck hunters were out in droves today and from the tremendous number of birds flying around, I’d bet most of them did well.  We heard a good number of shots.

The actually “fishing” was probably better than the “catching” today.  Todd started us out with some really nice fish following in his Rapala that I’d set him up with for pike/pickerel.  At first, I thought some of the fish following in his lure were pike, but after a few follows it became clear that they were lake trout.  We wound up the day with a couple 15″+ browns caught casting and a couple lake trout, also caught casting.  We even had a few yellow perch, which I don’t encounter often while fishing for trout/salmon.  A few fish were also lost.  I’m not seeing many pike on Cayuga Lake this year.  Salmon numbers also seem very low. On the positive side, we are seeing nice numbers of beautiful young brown trout.  The great thing about small browns is that they grow up to be BIG browns, so we have that to look forward to on Cayuga Lake.  Decent numbers of lake trout are roaming shallow – even over the weed flats, although numbers aren’t what we were seeing 3 or 4 years ago shallow when our inshore goby numbers were high.  We had one laker gobble a lure set up for northerns!

Water levels are low, but launchable at both Taughannock and Myers Park.  Water temperature was 44 but expect it to cool down even more with the cold melting snow run-off that’s currently going into the lake.  We also have a big freeze ahead of us in the next two weeks.