Reports

It felt good to have some solid, good fishing over the past two days. My job felt a lot easier! Less stress and more fun. Water levels came up around 2′ on Cayuga and at least a foot on Skaneateles Lake. Perhaps it’s the weather, but boat traffic was remarkably light on BOTH lakes! I was amazed to pull out of Skaneateles Lake on a hot sunny July 3rd and only see a few trailers in the lot. I was expecting chaos over there. Cayuga wasn’t bad for the 4th either.

Skaneateles Lake 7/3: Picked up Scott at his dock and we headed south around 6:30 am. High water and cloudy/windy conditions, plus the relatively consistent “stable yet unstable” weather pattern made for some very good bass action. The usual tubes were excellent in the morning with plenty of fish in less than 8 FOW. No monster bass today, but a load of fish in the 11″ to 12″ range with a handful up to just over 15″. What they lacked in size, they made up for in sheer aggressiveness! A few rockbass were also landed. VHS remains a factor in this lake, mainly taking its toll on the rockbass.

At around 10:30 we swung back to Scott’s dock and picked up his son Joseph and went back to fishing. The sun came out and winds diminished a bit. Fish moved out a bit (18′ to 23′ or so)and instead of dropshotting them, we decided to take a run further south to find some shallower fish that might hit some Superflukes. Casting the Superflukes was a blast and Scott did well with them. Joe did some tubing and also managed to land a small (12″ to 13″) lake trout while dropshotting in around 30 FOW. We ran all the way down to the south end weeds and a decent smallmouth was landed on the dropshot and a few pickerel were hooked/landed on a spinnerbait. The pickerel for the most part run small here, but they hit hard and the guys love hooking them. Fun day with steady action throughout.

Cayuga Lake 7/4: Had a last minute call from Mitch and met him, his friend Tyler and Tyler’s dad Steve at Taughannock around 6:30 am. The laker bite was on and we had good steady action from the get-go near AES. Fish can be found throughout both shore right now. No great size on the lakers today – it felt like Keuka Lake out there, but there were plenty of fish. A couple lampreys came up with the trout. The guys landed 9 nice fish and lost a few as well. Very good fishing and we managed to wrap up right after about 4 1/2 hours of fishing – we beat the 4th of July rush at the park (there was a line of cars backed up on Rt. 89 by the time I pulled out,) so I was pleased. Lakers are still feeding fairly heavily and out of the two we kept, one was loaded with alewives.

bass cayuga lake Chain Pickerel Skaneateles Lake