Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 4/5
Guided Shelley and Russell for a 1/2 day starting around 11:30 am. Winds were blowing pretty good out of the north – probably 7 to 14 mph. The forecast sun didn’t appear until about 3:30 pm. A shore fisherman who stopped by the launch to see what was going on had managed 3 decent salmon earlier. They are starting to show the effects of the lamprey population out there. Some of the fish were beaten up pretty good with multiple scars.
The winds were a bit harsh to work along the park. We spent our day south of the park mixing some salmon casting with laker jigging. Russ pretty much all the fishing with Shelley along for the ride. Staying warm was half the battle with the chilly north winds! Russ might have had one hit from salmon. He was casting and fishing the lures well, the salmon just weren’t around or responding to what we were doing (usually with wind they are pretty aggressive, so I’d tend to believe the former.)
I set Russel up for some laker jigging and he did a nice job, picking up his limit in fairly short order. Fish ran from 18″ to 25 1/2″. One had a fresh lamprey wound, but the other two were clean. We tried the south end of the lake for salmon for 1/2 hour. It looked good and water temp/color was also good. I’m sure we could’ve found them, but there’s a lot of water to cover via casting and we didn’t want to spend too much time down there. All in all a cold, but productive and fun day. A little sun and heat would’ve been nice though!