Cayuga/Taughannock 5/14
Guided 1/2-day trip with Irene and Ron. Two years ago, the salmon fishing was pretty slow on Cayuga Lake and I wasn’t booking casting trips for them, but the fishing this season has been reminiscent of some of the better years of the past decade. Ron was hoping I could get Irene into some fish she’d have to play out, rather than just crank in. We did some fly-fishing, but the best option given the wind was using some spinning tackle. Irene managed to land a nice salmon around 19″ and a brown around 18″. They had some nice follows as well. All in all, a really fun day on the water and Irene was pretty thrilled with her fish. We also worked on some fly-casting and that was fun as well.
After the trip ended I went back out with a friend/client Jesse. I met him back when I worked at Bass Pro Shops and I always enjoyed talking fishing with him. We did a fly-fishing trip on Owasco Lake last June for pike. He brought me some venison today and we did some fishing. We had some decent salmon action – and between the shore fishing at the park he’d done earlier and being out on the boat he landed at least 5 nice fish. His flies and sinking line set-up and retrieve worked very well. I managed to land one good salmon around 19″ that really fought great. We checked on some pike fishing and managed to catch a couple good pickerel incl. Jesse’s 26″ fish! What a nice pickerel! We then hit a few pike – Jess got a 31″ and 32″ and I got a 29″ fish. He had a couple follows of some good (maybe bigger) fish as well. Cayuga is fishing like Seneca did 5 years ago – lower numbers of pike, but they are all beauties. H2O was 49 to 52 today. Great day out!