Reports

Did a 6-hour day with Gordon starting at 9:45 am.  I’ve had a few people ask me why there haven’t been any fishing reports over the past couple of months.  For those of you who do not read all of my posts, I’m pretty sure I had a hose or some sort of connection crack on my winter boat during late-December.  (That boat is currently at Silver Lake Marine and the guys are figuring out what happened.)  Anyhow, I rarely guide when forecast highs are right around the freezing mark – whether just above or just below.  I did a couple of very cold trips in December out on Cayuga Lake and ran the livewell.  I believe the water in the hoses froze immediately afterwards – unbeknownst to me, and during a late-December Seneca Lake trip, I wound up with more water showing up in my bilge than I like to see!  Bruce at Silver Lake Marine gave me a couple of great tips on preventing these issues:  1.)  Don’t run the livewell in the winter or washdown hose for that matter (I used to run my well, but never my washdown system,) and 2.) Most importantly – get some plugs and plug up all of the drain holes on the transom.  That to me, is the money tip!  Plug up the livewell drain, intake and washdown intake.  Problem solved – even if you already cracked a hose!   Had I known that, I would have done a few trips in January/February.  Now I know, and you do too!

Gordon has been coming out with me since around 2006 and is one of my main fly-fishing clients, so that’s all he did today.  He had an evening commitment, so we couldn’t get in a full-day, so we went with 6-hours.  (I do 6-hour days on occasion when someone has a time conflict.)  After the brutal cold abated maybe 2 weeks ago, some of you may have heard of some very hot salmon fishing taking place here.  Those fish have now spread out a lot more – which is good for them!  As much as we all love to get into big groups of fish, it’s better for the fish when they spread out.  After all, we all want to catch some bigger ones next year!  That being said, the fishing is still good to very good at times.

We had a slow but steady AM, with Gordon dropping a couple of fish and missing a couple of grabs.  We checked out a few areas without seeing too much.  I even brought a couple of pike fly-fishing set-ups for him to try.  The last day of pike season is March 15th, so there are still a few days left.  No grabs or action whatsoever on the northerns.  We went back to salmon and Gordon had some good fish follow in one area.  He nabbed a 23″ chunker that was a gorgeous fish!  He got a couple great jumps out of it which really made the day.  After that, the fish got a bit more active and he nabbed several more, all in the 16.5″ to 17.5″ range.  Overall it was very good fly-fishing in the afternoon, but somewhat slow in the morning for us.

Water temperature was around 40/41 degrees.  Lakes are still COLD!  Water level was good.  Boat traffic was fairly light.  A few trollers were out on the day as well as a couple other boats of casters and one boat of perch anglers.  At least that’s what I saw.

Thursday March 13 is open for trips and looks to be a gorgeous day.  Whether you want salmon, deep lakers or even want to fly-fish lake trout (on Keuka Lake,) it looks optimal.  If I don’t book it, I’ll be fishing somewhere on my own!