Owasco Lake 12/21 + Cayuga Lake 12/22
So far it’s shaping up to be a mild winter. With water temperatures hovering in the 42/43 degree range and above average air temps, it’s unlikely we’ll see any icing on large lakes for a long time. Angling effort has been very light on Cayuga and Owasco Lakes. More anglers are heading to Seneca and Skaneateles Lakes.
Owasco Lake 12/21: Launched out of Emerson Park with my buddy Mike around 10 or 10:30 am. With forecast light winds, the highs topping out around 31 degrees weren’t too uncomfortable. I wear a one piece Mustang Survival suit in the winter on the boat and I stay very warm. We targeted perch today so Mike could get some for a work X-mas party. With the calmer conditions, the perch weren’t nearly as aggressive as they were the last time we were out here. We used plastics and many bites were undetectable. Most of the areas we fished had some perch around, but we never hit into the motherlode. We wound up with around 20 keepers and probably as many were thrown back. We had a few doubles as well. Nothing over 10″, but a bunch of nice 8″ to 9″ fish. In area, Mike fouled a big fish. He knew it was probably a carp – which it was. It was big, around 15lbs.
I did a bit of pike casting while Mike targeted perch and I managed to land 3. I also had other follows and hits – the pike fishing was very good. I kept one fish at 32.5″ and it was in very good condition – it weighed 9lbs 4oz. That’s why I like winter pike fishing – the fish are heavy for their length. Water temps were around 43 degrees. One other boat was out today.
Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 12/22: Got underway with Mike again around 10:30 am with some nice conditions for landlocked salmon. I prefer a north wind on Cayuga Lake and like to see a few days in a row of it, but the southerlies can be productive. They weren’t for us today though. We fished hard, mostly fly-casting using both intermediate and full sinking lines. Later on we quickly covered some water with gear. We never raised nor saw a fish. Not even a dink!
We tried an area or two for perch without luck. I’ve never understood why Cayuga’s perch seem to concentrate on the lake’s north end, whereas it seems like there’s some good habitat for them elsewhere. The same stuff that’s great on Owasco is devoid of fish on Cayuga. Seneca is even trickier. I know there are small populations of perch on the south end and in a few other places on Cayuga apart from the north end, but I don’t find much. And I almost never see any boats out in the wintertime targeting perch apart from the Union Springs/North areas. FWIW, I did foul hook a large sucker. So Mike with a carp yesterday and my sucker today. Yay.
We finally fished around AES for a bit. With the mild winter, there’s been very little coal burning going on. Zero warm water has been coming out of the plant. I landed a big pickerel and an average pike near the plant, but if I said I thought it was worth a special trip, I’d be lying. I felt lucky, given that water temps are cold there. But once the plant starts generating, we should see some decent pike/pickerel action and some trout/salmon too.
Overall a tough day on Cayuga Lake. I felt we should’ve encountered some LL Salmon if there’s a strong year-class or two out there, but we didn’t. That being said, the last time I was on the lake I saw a some very nice salmon and good numbers of them, so there are some very good fish around. And we encountered a lot of dinks this past summer. My guess is that fish were suspended over deeper water than what we tried today. Anyways, we’re going to hit Cayuga Lake a few more times under more ideal conditions before we make any judgments regarding this year’s salmon fishing. There was next to nobody fishing from shore at Taughannock, which likely confirms the slow start to this year’s salmon/trout season out there.