Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 3/24

Reports

Guided my old school friend Chris, his son Brian and Chris’s nephew Tim today for around 6 hours. Tim was a bit out of commission with a bum knee from a wrestling injury, so we weren’t fishing at “full power” today. We had a good time with a lot of follows, some big fish hooked up and some smaller fish brought to the net. The guys dropped some nice sized browns and possibly salmon today – a couple were in the 4 to 6lb range. But that’s the way things go. I had them using some stickbaits with single hooks in the back. After a couple lost fish I switched them out to trebles in the back, but it didn’t help.

Around 1/2 dozen sublegal salmon including one dink brown made it to the net. I record the lengths for the DEC angler diary program. One lamprey came up on a salmon. Water temps made it up to around 45 degrees today. We hooked and saw fish in a variety of areas. I’m not sure why some of the winter angling was slow. A lot of fish may have been keying in on the gobies. The brown trout are starting to make a good showing. My friend Todd landed a 28.75″ beauty while trolling a couple days ago – that fish was probably 13lbs or better. I’ve seen quite a few nice browns around and as I mentioned before, the 16″ to 17″ small browns are hefty and are very nice fish this year. These ain’t cigars! These are quality fish that hit hard, jump and fight very well. I remember the term “Lake Ontario Footballs” in regards to brown trout. I’m not sure what the Lake Ontario browns look like this year, but the football team may have relocated to Cayuga!