Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 3/25
Had a great time and great day fishing with my friend Todd. He guided in Alaska for years and is good with both conventional gear and fly-gear. We got out at around 10:45 am and worked a few areas both casting gear and fly-tackle. We didn’t get off the water until nearly 6:30 pm. The first area yielded a solid laker for Todd. We worked another area and got right into fish. We had some good follows and I finally nabbed a nice but small salmon around 16″. Things really picked up from then on and we wound up landing another 10 or 11 solid fish. I caught a few on flies fishing a full-sinking line including a fine 22″ chunky brown and a salmon around the same size along with a smaller one. Todd did great on a tube jig catching a bunch of fish including another laker. Best fish of the day was Todd’s 25″ dropback salmon. He also lost a chromer that was bigger with a spectacular jump near the boat.
March really tends to get the salmon frenzied a bit on Cayuga Lake. We certainly didn’t encounter this density of salmon earlier in the season fishing the areas we fished and the way we like to fish (casting/fly-casting.) Lamprey wounding is moderate. Nearly all the fish over 20″ had signs of lamprey activity. One of my salmon came up with a small lamprey. Water level remains low. Water temps were around 37. It was cold to start and on the run over to the fishing area the boat spray did a good job icing up the rods I had hanging off of the back of the boat.