Reports

An old angling friend of mine, BC, has decided to keep his Ranger Bass Boat on Cayuga Lake after years of keeping it on Canandaigua Lake, then Braddocks Bay and over the past dozen years or so, Sodus Bay.  (He’s actually on his 2nd Ranger Boat now.)  BC and I go back to the late 1980s and 1990s when we used to drive up to the north shore of Massachusetts with our friend Jeff and fish for bluefish and stripers.

It’s been a long time since I spent a full-day up on Cayuga’s north end, so I was really looking forward to this trip.  BC likes to pitch jigs and often bass fishes different types of areas than I typically gravitate towards, so I kept that in mind and took him to some areas that he’d find more up his alley.   He also never really got into crankbaiting, which is really one of the best methods of covering water in Cayuga Lake while searching for bass, so we explored that today as well.

Cayuga’s northern portions are looking great!  The water is clear, water temperatures are around 65/66 and boat traffic/angling pressure is very light.  I showed him some seasonal areas to fish (pre-spawn, spawn, post-spawn, summer and so on…)  and he patiently worked some promising areas, without any hits.

Weeds have come up a bit since I was out solo a month or two ago.  We found some promising looking “grass” and sure enough, it didn’t take long to nab a pickerel.   BC then set into a good hit on a crankbait and wound up landing a 20″ fat largemouth!  He told me that would have been in his top 5 for the year (he fishes Sodus Bay twice a week.)  What a great first fish on a crankbait!   Decent numbers of pickerel came soon thereafter.  A couple of nice perch as well.  For what it’s worth, perch seemed a bit scattered.  I get asked a lot about Cayuga perch.  I think it’s still early yet, but a perseverant angler could certainly catch some good perch now.

We worked some areas up north and BC nabbed a largemouth just a hair under 15″ on one of his favorite plastics.  He also missed a fish or two.  We wound up fishing south again and he nabbed quite a few nice pickerel.  By the end of the day, the pickerel bite was really hot on Cayuga – in probably 7′ to 12′ of water, although some are certainly deeper as well.  Fun day and it was great catching up with BC.  He’ll be an invaluable contact for me moving ahead on bass fishing Cayuga Lake!