Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 9/6
Slow start, but by mid-AM fishing was in peak form! Guided Boris, Mitchell and Nathan for the full day. Boris and Mitchell have fished with me twice – once for pike and once for lakers. Today was laker-time. We stayed N. of Taughannock all day long. Conditions were somewhat windy to start and Nate had the hot land landing a couple nice lakers. Thing were looking pretty darn slow around 6 to 9 am, but as the winds switched and cloud cover moved in, the bite really picked up. The guys did great mostly using smelt colored Shakers. Around 13 to 14 nice fish were landed including a 28″ wild one which we released. Many fish kept were loaded with alewives and one female was pretty ripe. Bait numbers were pretty insane, with some tremendous schools marked.
On their best days, Keuka and Canandaigua Lakes have about 5% of the bait we find on Cayuga! And that’s a stretch. Year in and year out Cayuga is THE top Finger Lake and probably the top (non-Great Lake) salmonid producer in NY State – and maybe the entire northeast. The fall brown trout fishing and the winter/spring landlocked salmon fishery will bear this out – mark my words! Lampreys are under control. Rainbows are coming back. I give a lot of credit to Jeff Robins and DEC Region 7 fisheries for doing such a terrific job managing this lake! Seneca Lake is tremendous for lakers and landlocked salmon, but lampreys are always a threat and Cayuga is much more consistent on big browns. Either way – we have a lot of terrific fishing here. And unlike the Great Lakes, you don’t have to be overly concerned about contaminant levels here! There are no specific advisories on Cayuga or Seneca Lakes!