Lamoka Lake 9/13 PM + Cayuga/Taughannock 9/14 AM
I finally had some free time on my own, so off to Lamoka Lake I went. I’d never fished it before (though I fished Waneta once on a slow day.) A former co-worker of mine had seen some huge muskies cruising around over the summer and I was hoping to see one (hopefully at the end of my line!) I cast some huge swimbaits around as well as some smaller stuff. Got one nice pickerel – which was cool. Getting ANY fish while throwing huge stuff for muskies is a thrill! For those of you who haven’t fished it – it’s a nice lake. Reminds me of one of my favorites – Butterfield Lake (near Black Lake). There’s islands, plenty of deep water, plenty of weeds and the lake has a nice water color. The main drawback is the shallow channel that boats must take to get on the lake (if they use the State Launch.) It’s a “prop-dinger”. I did a little bassin’ later on and caught a nice fish on a Senko. Panfish were hammering the worm. I didn’t have the time to do half of what I wanted to. I’ll be back. My musky rod and reel just arrived in the mail, so I’m hoping to make Waneta/Lamoka regular stops in my fishing rotation!
Did a 1/2-day guide trip today with Tim. I was optimistic re: the bite today given the nice sunny clear weather in the AM. For some reason (visibility/silhouettes) the sun seems to help trigger the fall laker bite on Cayuga Lake. Tim did well picking up the technique. He dropped his first couple hits but connected with a nice laker in short order. Soon thereafter he nailed a nice 24″ brown that was 2 ounces shy of 6lbs. (I finally bought a super-accurate scale – a 35lb Berkely TEC Scale.) A 29″ laker (plus another nice fish dropped) and a bonus 18″ landlocked salmon rounded out the day. Fish are still relatively deep – from around 75′ on out. Plenty of bait is around and the male brown was packed with a couple huge sawbellies (aka alewives). After the trip I did some deep water fly-fishing using a heavy head. No luck, but I felt good about it – the flies were getting down deep, weren’t fouling much and should work fine. Browns just ain’t super easy – it’ll take time.