Guided three members of the Mariano family today - Steve, Sal and Dave for a 1/2 day trip getting underway slightly after 7 am. We saw the first steady, warming weather of the season today, which in spring and summer, equals good fishing! Reportedly, a lot of anglers have been griping about the chinook (king) salmon fishing in Lake Ontario, but this week should change things for the better. Cayuga Lake fished like its old self today - we had a very good day starting out with Steve's 28" rainbow trout he caught within maybe 15 minutes of our start. The fish jumped three times and we were lucky to land it! It was clearly a drop-back (post-spawn) rainbow - still thin from the rigors of spawning and missing some scales, but otherwise healthy. We released it to fight again. Post-spawn trout/salmon are not particularly good on the table either, so there was no point in keeping that fish, even when looking for a meal. The lake trout were very cooperative today and the guys did a great job with a solid double-digit day. A few were dropped as well. Our lakers ran 19" to 26" today with David losing a good fish after a strong fight. He got the fish up to the leader (my leaders are long - 2 to 3 rod lengths) before it got off. Overall Steve had the hot hand to start, but after the first couple of hours the other guys started doing well. Some other nice (not post-spawn) rainbows chased some of our jigs today, but did not hook up. Fish are still fairly stuffed with bait - I filleted 6 lakers today and all had been eating well.
It was a hot day temperature-wise, but the nice breeze over the lake kept things manageable, as did our early start. A thermocline still hasn't formed. No signs of algae either - usually the algae bloom follows the formation of the thermocline by a week or two. We'll see how things go the rest of the week. I think we are back on track, at least for now.
