Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 4/23

Reports

Did a full day fly-fishing trip with Gordon, who has joined me on quite a few guide trips over the past 5 years. He usually does pretty well with the fishing and timing of his trips and today was no exception. Calm conditions this AM made for some decent fly-fishing opportunities. Again – I’m not seeing many sizeable salmon on this lake this year, but there’s good action to be had with some smaller fish. Gordon had a lot of hits and follows on mostly sublegal fish. He landed 4 or 5, plus one brown around 16″ that we kept. The brown was well-fed and stuffed with alewives. Type 4 full sinking lines and intermediate lines did the trick today. We used my bionic smelt pattern for the most part.

Seneca is the place to be for salmon, but with forecast north winds around 15 mph +, I’m happy to stay on Cayuga! Water temps in the main lake ran to 48 degrees. We had 53 in Cayuga Inlet. Very few boats were out today. I expect decent salmon fishing on this lake in 2011. Fall runs of brown trout in the tribs should be very impressive if we get ample rainfall.