Cayuga Lake 4/23 – 25

Got out for two 1/2-days of lake trout jigging on Cayuga Lake out of Long Point and then one full-day of fly-fishing for salmon out of Myers.  In a nutshell, lake trout jigging is showing signs of quick improvement.  I cleaned a couple of fish from Thursday's trip and they were LOADED with bait.  Baitfish schools were moving in as well in good numbers.  May should be a stellar month for lake trout on Cayuga.

4/23 midday:  Guided Lance and his wife Kendra for a midday 1/2-day trip starting just after 10:30 am.  They had some child-care issues to attend to, so we had to do a tight half-day with a slightly later start than I typically like.  We had decent numbers of fish on screen but they were pretty tentative, with occasional aggressive fish chasing jigs hard.  We never had much wind and that made it tough covering water (i.e., no drifting - just having to hit the trolling motor a lot or fire up the big motor.)  Eventually a couple of fish were landed, but it certainly wasn't what we expect on Cayuga Lake this time of year.

They have a nice boat and spend a good amount of time both boat-fishing and shore fishing.  Lance's young son Atlas is a precocious fishing machine and they have another one that will probably also be the same!

4/24 midday:  Guided Bob and his friend Jerry today for another half-day starting around 10:30 am.  The guys had a good drive today, thus the later start.  Bob had a stellar PM 1/2-day with me, I believe around 2 years ago.   Every year has been a different story.

Deep laker jigging has been getting noticeably better by the day.  Things weren't easy again to start today, but by late in the day we saw signs of some potentially explosive action (which we know is coming.)  We didn't land many fish today, but we had baitfish moving in and various drops of the jigs with 8 to 10 fish chasing.  Fish are starting to distribute widely on Cayuga Lake throughout the deeper northern portions of the lake.  They are also putting on the feedbag.  I think this activity is really just getting underway.  Both guys caught some fish today and the best one was Jerry's 32" beast which weighed in at 10lbs 8oz.  After a good, very strong battle, Bob lost a beast that we never saw!   Two of the three fish I cleaned were full of bait.  We released one older beat-up warhorse.  I don't see any point of keeping any dark, thin, beat-up laker that's clearly 15 to 25 years old.   There's nothing appealing to me about eating a fish like that on any level.

4/25 Myers Park:  Guided Mark I. today for a full-day getting underway at 9 am.  We had a lot of options to consider today - do we fly-fish Seneca or Cayuga Lake?  How about Keuka for lake trout?  Mark hit the Keuka fish great last year.  He had a solid day fly-fishing on Seneca Lake back in March.  Cayuga Lake made sense.  Weather was definitely a factor today with very light winds at times.  That makes for tough fly-fishing.

Water levels are great for launching out of Myers.    A month or two ago, there was a lot of discussion on social media about how bad Myers launch was for launching due to bad slabs and so on.  At least that's what I heard.  I talked to park officials a couple of years ago and hopefully it'll happen (i.e., the slabs get replaced) sooner rather than later, but they've been awful for a long time and it's only a factor when Cayuga Lake is very low.  When the lake is up - like it is now, perhaps a foot or so below full-pool, launching is not an issue.  I always use Taughannock's launch when Cayuga Lake is low.  Nothing has changed really, since I moved to Lansing back around 2012, Myer's has never been a great low water launch.

Mark's fly-casting was superb as always.  Picture-perfect tight loops with only a couple of false casts and no issues putting out 70' to even 80' of line at times!   But no matter how you look at it, fly-fishing is not an efficient way to cover water!  We had to cover a lot of water to find fish today.  In one area, after maybe two-hours of casting, Mark had a follow from a very chunky salmon in the low-20s inch range.  No grabs though!  No follows from lakers, browns or rainbows.  Our wind nearly died on us a couple of times and we hit an area that I really like for late-season salmon on the fly.  Just as we were getting ready to move, Mark had a very solid hit, and then another. He had a follow from a good fish.  At this time, the weather was changing - wind direction and storms were moving in, so it was tricky fishing.  Mark made a funky sort of errant back cast and was pulling in his fly to recast when he felt weight.  He nabbed an 18"er.  A couple other hits followed.  We were getting ready to move again and a fish flashed under the boat, well away from Mark's fly.  I said "take another cast!"   He did and got walloped!  This fish was the best fighting salmon Mark has caught in years.  It jumped around 10 times!  Insane fight and took some time to get in.  It was just over 20"!!!  Not a monster at all, but one of those fish that proves that the reputation landlocked salmon have is well-earned!   Tremendous fight!  People love smallmouth bass but I've handled plenty of 18" to 20" bass and some bigger.  None has ever fought remotely like that salmon. Sorry...

Our winds died down maybe 45 minutes after that salmon, as did our action.  Not an easy day of fly-fishing, but water temperatures remain good for it.  I expect reasonable fly-fishing and spin-casting on Cayuga and Seneca Lakes through about May 15th or so.  After that, they are available, but really all up and down the lake shores and can be tough to pinpoint via casting.