Cayuga Lake 6/22 PM + 6/23 AM

Fished yesterday evening with Craig and Dave, then went back out with them this morning.  Craig was out with me back on June 11th, when his buddy Dan wound up with the hot hand.  Craig's good fortune was back to its usual form over the past two days.

6/22 PM out of Long Point State Park:  Met the guys here at 3 pm and headed out into some good north winds.  I had an area in mind that had been fishing well over the past three weeks or more for us.   We marked good numbers of fish and some bait, but the action was slow for around two hours.  At that point the proverbial "switch" was flipped and the bite got pretty hot.  The guys wound up landing 10 legal fish.  We had a few around 20" to 21" in the mix but most were nice 24" range specimens.

Dave managed to catch his first lake trout.  He loves to fish and lived in Florida and California before moving to NYS this past January.   Craig owns three shops (two tattoo and one piercing) and Dave works for him and does some amazing work.  After the first couple hours of the trip, with few bites and Dave losing a nice fish, I joked about the banana superstition.  Dave told me that he had a group of guys that would do charters and make sure they brought bananas just to mess with the Captains.  Dave went so far as to get a banana tattoo!!!   I thought that was hilarious and took a couple shots of it.

If you want a top notch tattoo, look into Craig's shop.  He has one right in Oneonta:   The Oculo Visitant Gallery.   https://oculovisitantgallery.com/  I don't have any tattoos, but if I did want one I'd visit Craig and get a landlocked salmon on one arm and a bowfin on the other.   The work coming out of his shop is superb.

Craig tried the lake trout livers last time and enjoyed them.  A client of mine from years ago - a different Dave, also told me about eating them, so it wasn't the first time I'd heard about that but it was the second time I'd heard that they were tasty.  So I saved those for him.  I also cut the cheeks out of the fish for Dave.  The guys wanted to swing by Bass Pro Shops on the way back to their motel, so we headed in a little bit early.

6/23 AM out of Myers Town Park:   I hadn't been fishing out of Myers in a long time - probably since April or maybe even March.  Usually by the end of June I'm running some of my lake trout trips out of here.  It's much closer to my apartment than Long Point.  However, this year the northern portion of the lake has been fishing very well overall for lakers so I've been sticking with it.  Last weekend we worked our way down the lake a bit and encountered fish.  As far as I can tell, the large groups of trout have yet to move down yet. Of course there are localized populations of lake trout in various areas that can provide good fishing year round.  Anyways, the guys wanted to try something different today so Myers it was.

We were hoping to encounter some "bonus fish" today - browns, salmon or rainbows.  We had some follows from small salmon or perhaps bows but didn't have any success on them.  Craig had one follow from what appeared (to him - I didn't see it) to be a good brown.  Interestingly, Craig had a bite-off from a toothy critter down around 65'!  Years ago on Owasco Lake in late May or June, I saw a guy trolling copper lines ("pulling copper") catch a northern pike on bottom in around 70' of water.  Some day maybe Cornell will do a telemetry study on Finger Lakes pike and we'll see where they go in the summer months.  Something tells me that it would be eye-opening!  The lakers didn't let us down and we did manage a few of those including Dave's really nice one.

Water fleas are starting to show up.  This always seems to correlate with the setting up of the thermocline.  It's a good idea to keep them off your line and equipment.  When they dry up they can play havoc with your reel's exposed moving parts, like the worm gear.

My summer availability is dwindling fast!  Over the past couple days I've been booking trips steadily so if you want to get out this summer, please reserve a day now!  Otherwise it could be tough to procure.   I have kept my availability list updated.  Of course dates do open up on occasion due to cancellations and rescheduling so it's a good idea to stay tuned.