Reports

It has felt a little bit like the “old days” lately (2005 – 2012), fishing equal time on Seneca and Cayuga Lakes.  Water temps remain cold for this time of year (at least when compared to recent years.)  Water levels are high and going up.  We could get another 1/2″ of rain tonight.  Cayuga Lake is gradually heading to a minor flood level.  Seneca is also high.  Boats with high canopies may wind up having a tough time negotiating the bridge at Taughannock if we get the predicted rain.

5/6 Cayuga Lake out of Long Point:  Guided a full day today with Ron and Matt starting at 9:30 am. The laker bite was excellent for most of the AM, slowed down a bit midday and then picked up again in the afternoon heading towards the evening.  The guys landed 25 fish and dropped quite a few as well.  Fish are starting to move in shallower but many remain out in 110′ to 150′.  Fish are still full of alewives and feeding heavily.

5/7 Seneca Lake out of Watkins Glen:  We gave the salmon a try today.  Fishing was fair at best.  The lower end of Seneca Lake had a huge influx of muddy water and debris a few days prior.  Most of it settled out but the water remains a green color.  It’s the color trollers love, especially up on Lake Ontario.  That nice “fishy green.”  We covered a lot of water today and in one area saw one salmon jump that had an attached lamprey on it.  In another stretch we fished we saw another salmon just jump.  We had a couple follows in one stretch.  Ron hooked up and landed a 17.5″ salmon on a stickbait in one area.  He hooked another and just wound up with a lamprey on his hook!  I’ve seen this happen before – a salmon swirls after a stickbait and the attached lamprey gets gigged!   That was it for the day, which was a 6 hour trip.

If you’re willing to put in the time and cover water (like by trolling) you can have a good day out here.  But salmon are clearly on the move and casters will have to also put in a lot of time searching in order to connect with fish.  There’s good fishing to be had, but it’s not going to be as straight forward as the winter/early spring fishing here.

5/8 Cayuga Lake out of Long Point:  Guided Rory for a half day.  He usually kayak fishes and wanted to get some info on jigging and fishing Cayuga Lake.  He just moved to NY around a year or year and a half ago.  Fishing started out good with a fish hooked in short order.  After that it was slow for an hour or two then really picked up.  He managed around a half dozen nice lakers on the day including maybe 3 wild fish.  We found fish as shallow as 80′ today (and as I mentioned before water temperatures are conducive to fish being right off shore now.)   We also caught them in the usual deep water – 120′ to 150′.   Fun day and most of the boats I saw out were all Charters.

Seneca Lake out of Sampson State Park 5/9:  Guided a half day starting at 9 am with Jack, who joined me in early April for a salmon trip out of Watkins Glen.  He bought a place near Kashong Point last year and wanted me to show him around the lake and learn a few patterns to catch fish here.  We worked areas from Sampson and Dresden north to Geneva today.  Not a lot has changed here over the past 4 years.  There is still a lot of bait around on Seneca Lake – it’s tough to motor far without seeing some huge clouds of bait.  There are fish around too.  Not a lot, but enough.  You don’t have to motor too far to find lake trout marks.  The fish are also very tentative.  They do not want to chase jigs around much.  This is another lake where for the time-being trollers may have an edge.   That being said, today Jack had 10 to 15 good opportunities with fish chasing his jig.  Had the fish committed just a bit more, we could have had a half dozen fish or more hooked and perhaps landed.  As it was, he landed one nice stocked laker today – a 25″er that probably went 5 1/2 pounds or so.  It had one old scar on it, so it was fairly clean.

Open Days: 

May is completely booked – thanks!

June: 4th, 11th, 12th, 26th – 28th

July:  Most of July is available with the exceptions of the 2nd, 5th, 13th and 21st.

August and onwards is open.