Reports 8/7 to 8/11
When it comes to getting these reports up in a timely manner, I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. If I put up a report in the middle of a busy guiding run, I miss out on valuable sleep, if I don’t then the days stack up and details get a bit muddy.
In general, the “steady yet unsteady” weather pattern has resulted in good to excellent fishing lately. I hope it keeps up!
8/7: Cayuga out of Taughannock – Guided Tony for a full day. It was good seeing him, as it had been a while. We were hoping to get into browns and he managed to land one solid fish around 24″. Laker action wasn’t bad, though for some reason – either bad luck or what, Tony got a lot of hits but the hookups weren’t solid. During the last couple hours of the trip he landed some solid lakers.
8/8: Seneca Lake out of Geneva – Tony was out for bigger fish today and Seneca didn’t disappoint. He had a banner day on some large lakers to 31″. I think he landed around 23 fish if I’m not mistaken. It was excellent fishing and we started around 6:30 am. It was fun day and Tony was back to his usual excellent form. Fish remain in the same depths as before.
8/9: Owasco Lake out of Emerson Park – I was psyched to do this trip with Dan and his buddy Carl. We hit great fishing on Cayuga Lake last week and with the Lighthouse Derby going on, we decided to fish elsewhere. Dan wanted to do gar, but Sodus is a zoo on weekends and I was leery about targeting gar with the cold nights we’ve been having. Dan was up for learning a “new lake” (for him.) So Owasco it was.
How is the laker fishing on Owasco Lake this year? Earlier this season and last year were very good, with fish looking healthier than I’ve seen them since I’ve been fishing this lake (circa 2002.) We fished all over the lake today and Dan landed the only laker – one around 23″. Quite a few other fish were hooked and dropped, but I’m not sure how many were lakers. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the lakers were suspended over deep water, but we didn’t encounter too many today on the flats. We did mark lakers nearly everywhere – on both ends of the lake, Bucks – Fays, Wykoff, Long Point, the South end et al. But they weren’t too active. So the fish are around.
We had some fish moving very aggressively for the jigs. Not a chance they were lakers or bass. They had to be rainbows and browns and the numbers of them were good! If you like to troll, now’s the time to hit Owasco. Dan managed to land a beautiful brown around 23″ that we released after a quick photo.
Conditions were looking good to excellent for smallmouths so we targeted them for awhile with soft jerkbaits. The guys managed a double and landed another 3 to 4 fish – including a 19.5″er earlier in the day over deep water. I’d be happy to guide smallmouths here and not go over to Keuka, but I need to put more time in on them. For now, I consider them more of a secondary, rather than primary option here. Fun day fishing!
8/10 AM: Cayuga Lake out of Long Point -Guided Kan and his son Jonathon for a 1/2 day starting at 7. We got a late start after Kan took a wrong turn, but it didn’t matter. Fishing was excellent north of Long Point! The guys wanted to learn how to jig and they landed 13 solid lakers! Great fishing with a few wild ones in the mix. We wrapped up with a limit before 11 am, though yours truly left one in the live well and completely forgot about it! Duh. But it gets hectic and I get tired, so unfortunately these things happen – though very rarely.
8/10 PM: Met Riley, Steven and Dalton at the launch around 11:15 and we headed out. We were last out 2 or 3 years ago and 2 out of 3 of the brothers were on the trip with their dad and we hammered the lakers on an afternoon/evening trip in late August, so we were hoping for a repeat. Unfortunately the bite got tough. The guys missed a lot of hits, but most of them weren’t very solid. We fished hard and I kept them out a while and finally things started happening. It was a tough day, but the guys wound up catching and releasing 6 lakers.
8/11 AM: Cayuga Lake out of Long Point – Met Mike, Steve and Riley (believe it or not, a completely different group of guys – sheer coincidence we had two Steves and Rileys on two consecutive days!) I was looking forward to a day off today, but after seeing the forecast for tomorrow, I had to bump the guys up. I’m not into wicked storms and 30 mph gusts. It was a fun trip with a lot of shucking and jiving for lack of a better term. The guys wanted to learn the technique and they did. Fishing was very good with around 10 or 11 solid fish landed including a couple nice wild ones. Fish topped out around 26″. We had at least one double. Our best fishing was deeper to start (around 75′ to 85′) then moved shallower (50′ to 60′) around 9:30 am. We started at 6:30 am. Fun day.