Cayuga/Taughannock 7/18
I finally got out on my own this evening on Cayuga Lake. The past 3 weeks have been pretty much non-stop guiding and it’s been nice having a few days “off”. I will be doing a lot of research and experimentation over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
I was really looking forward to tonight since I just installed my brand new Vexilar FL-18 Flasher on my bow. Those of you who’ve been out on trips where we’ve done some vertical jigging have seen the importance of good electronics. The Vexilar unit is a 3 color flasher with separation of up to 1/2″ off the bottom! It also features a “bottom lock” feature that shows the bottom 6′ – no matter how much we move.
In a nutshell, the unit was about 10 times as much fun to use as my previous LCDs! It only took around 10 to 20 minutes (at most) to get used to the flasher. The excitement of seeing fish appear on the bottom was exhilirating! Especially with the colors. The red is the strongest signal, so the fish may first appear green, then orange, then red. Once I saw a few red marks I knew I had a good chance of hooking up. The “real-time” was noticeably faster than that of either my Eagle or my Garmin units. The only drawback of the Vex is that it takes a little figuring to decipher exactly what the depth is. Numbers must be multiplied by the setting on the dial. Small price to pay for the clear advantages of the unit. I will be getting an FL-10 unit on my dash soon! The products can be checked out at www.vexilar.com/ There’s a couple great sections on the website regarding sonar in general – this stuff will help anyone understand sonar better.
Fishing was excellent. I did have some annoying young adults come disturbingly close to my boat while water-skiing. After my words fell on deaf ears, one cast with a 1 ounce jig pretty much solved that problem 😉 Last thing I heard was the skier swearing at the driver and his “friends” for motoring him so close to “the fisherman”. Later on they waved and kept their distance.
Anyways – I landed around 9 lakers in around 3 hours and dropped a couple fish. They ranged from 25″ to 30″. I fished from 5 to around 8 and they were still hitting good when I left. The fish were in around 55′ to 70′ of water. This fishing was more reminiscent of last summer’s hot bite.