Lake levels have come up around a foot of so on Cayuga Lake since the rain, snow and snowmelt. Launching at some of the shallow (say, north end launches) may still be challenging. Water temperatures are 38/39 degrees. Fishing is fair to good by Cayuga standards.
I have booked a fair number of trips over the past couple of weeks. If you're looking to get out over the next two months, this is the time to reserve your date.
3/5: Got out for a half-day trip with my good friend Todd along with Peter and his son Aiden, who both hail from Buffalo. They fish Lake Erie quite a bit. We had air temperatures around the upper 30s/low 40s and a fair amount of wind. It was cold out but not bad. The chop was what Pete called a "walleye chop." Fishing started out slowly but improved substantially after a couple of hours. We just hit the double digits before calling it a day. Fish ran from 25" to 30".
Lake trout in Cayuga Lake are still in a winter pattern and fairly dormant. The fishing is what you'd find here in December or January. Decent action at times, but perseverance and a willingness to move around is important. Fish came from 130' to 155' or so for us today. Good colors were chartreuse, white and I think we had a hit or two on Arkansas Shiner (Lunker City.)
A lot of hits were light early on and didn't connect. We did have a few doubles on too. It was a good day!
3/6: Today I got out with Joe and his friend John. They were referred to me by Jack, who was my first trip of the season. They're looking to get out a few times this spring and pattern these fish on Cayuga Lake. They do a lot of walleye fishing (as well as other species) on Oneida Lake and other nearby lakes. They were kind enough to give me a few tips on some of their favorite lures to work over there.
I figured the bite today would be hot and heavy with the calmer conditions, sun and lighter winds, but it was actually fairly tough for the first half of the trip. We took a couple of fish very deep - around 180' but we never really got anything going out there. We wound up getting into a decent bite later in the day around 150' to 165'. I think we wound up with 8 fish landed, seven of which we kept. These fish really haven't started to feed much yet - they are just coming out of their "hibernation." There were a few lamprey scars on fish and we had one live lamprey come onboard. They are probably already starting to transform with the mild winter we've had. Arkansas Shiner was hot for us today. We wound up with a nice catch but had to work for them. A decent number of good hookups were also dropped, which happens.
