Cayuga/North End + Seneca out of Sampson 7/13
Cayuga out of Cayuga Lake State Park 7/13 AM: Met Matt and his wife Erin at their dock at 5:30 am and set out for some largemouth bass. The winds were blowing pretty good out of the south when we started. We worked some shallow areas from around 4′ to 12′ with search baits like spinnerbaits and Rat-L Traps. Erin doesn’t fish much but was casting very well within an hour or so. Fishing was pretty good. Matt started things off with a couple decent largemouths on a spinnerbait. We worked areas out to around 18′ of water or so. Erin was happy just to catch a bass, which she did – a dink that is! But you can’t keep a good woman down long and on a large chart. Rat-L-Trap she caught the nicest bass of the morning – probably around 2+3/4 to 3lbs. Great fight! We didn’t find many pickerel which is what Matt was hoping for – Erin got one small one. Plenty of panfish were around too. Fish appear to be in a typical July Cayuga pattern – many fish still fairly shallow and quite a few out to around 12′ or more. The bite was good and I would have liked to have checked out some areas with crankbaits and jig/pig. Matt did some cranking w/o luck. Saw a bunch of carp and a few gar surfacing near Farley’s Point.
Seneca Lake out of Sampson 7/13 PM: I met the Hermans at Sampson at 4 pm and we set out for some laker jigging. What’s great about Sampson is you don’t need to go far to find good lakers. This was a prime consideration given that there were some T-storms predicted and I didn’t want to be far from our port when/if they came. I didn’t mark many fish N. of the park. Eleonore landed a 26″ fish within 20 minutes or so. After an hour and a half the weather got ominous, and the T-storms and lightning came. We tried waiting out the rain/storms in our vehicles, but after a warning from a park official about a harsh storm on the way, we called it quits.