Reports

The algae bloom continues to hinder angling on Cayuga Lake.  Word is that the bloom is lake-wide now with swimming at the State Parks prohibited by the Dept. of Health.  I haven’t heard on how bass fishing is, but coldwater species are still a bit “off”, although some fish are being caught.

The beauty of trailering my boat around is that I can pretty much go where I want.  If clients want to “roll the dice” and fish Cayuga Lake, we certainly can.  Overall, Owasco and Seneca Lakes are currently fishing much better for trout.  My clients from last weekend on Seneca Lake reported some fine fishing this week.  They took lake trout up to 11+1/2lbs over there!

I’ve always enjoyed fishing Seneca Lake, but Owasco Lake is much closer to me – it’s a 10 mile longer drive than Long Point State Park from my place.  (By the way – the bridge over Salmon Creek near Myers is finally open!)  That being said, I will be on Seneca Lake a fair amount over the next couple weeks.

7/21 AM Owasco Lake:  Guided Ed and his neighbor/friend Don for a half day starting at 6:30 am.  Fishing was slow for us for the first 2 hours.  Don then wound up hooking into a beautiful big brown trout that jumped twice!  It really cleared some water!  I would have guessed 12lbs from the looks of it but looks can be deceiving.  After a great battle I netted the fish – it was a 27″ 9lb beauty that we kept.  At that point, catching more fish wasn’t necessarily going to be a certainty.   We had actually had two browns chase jigs earlier in another area.  I literally have tried to get my clients over there around some browns for the last month and haven’t had much luck.  For whatever reason, they showed up today.  The guys landed 4 more lakers before we called it a day. There were some slight signs of algae (some discolored water) but nothing serious.  Last year, I believe the bloom here was in September/October.

7/22 AM:  Today I was back on Owasco Lake at 6:30 am with Mike and his wife Karen.  I’ve had Mike onboard quite a few times in the past going back to when I lived in Trumansburg if I’m not mistaken.  We had another gorgeous, great day on the lake.   Mike keeps his boat over at the private marina adjacent to Myers Park.  He’s tired of the algae bloom like the rest of us.   Karen kicked us off with another beautiful brown!  She did a stellar job playing the fish to the net.  We kept it and it was a 25″ or 26″ fish (I can’t recall exactly how long) that weighed 7lbs.  We likely had some other encounters with browns and rainbows on the day, but lakers are what we hooked and landed.  Karen had the hot hand, but overall, 7 solid fish were landed before we called it a day.