Cayuga Lake out of Long Point State Park 6/24

6/24 AM:  Day 2 with the Marianos.  Today I had Steve (Sr.) again, his son Steve and Steve's son (Steve Sr.'s grandson,) Matt.  Since the fish were hitting right off of the bat yesterday and it was also going to be HOT, I decided on a 6:30 am start time.  I can't say it really paid off much.  We did find some fish right away, where we left them yesterday, but they were much more tentative.  The guys had some hits with Steve Sr. nabbing a smaller (20" range) lake trout within the first half-hour that we released. Things weren't looking great with little to no wind and no clouds in the sky.  Around an hour and a half or more went by without any hook-ups.  We kept moving around and eventually got into a bite window or two, but they didn't last long.  The guys ended the day with a half-dozen fish, five of which we kept.  The kept fish had not been feeding as heavily as the fish we caught yesterday were.  Each had one or two alewives in their stomachs, as opposed to the 5 to 6 yesterday.  High point of the day was a double of 27" lakers landed by Matt (who is 12 years old) and Steven Sr.

Obviously a much slower day than yesterday, but we still had a lot of fun!

PM Trip:  Guided Mark I. today for a PM half day.  As I mentioned before in my posts, I'm not offering doubles until I see consistent day long fishing.  Clearly, it's rare when we get that day after day  throughout the course of the season, with the exception of the early season and perhaps August/September, but the bite still hasn't become as consistent as I'd like to see. (It's still worth doing full-day trips, as Mark's last trip proved - we caught fish until the last drop of the day, and the bite got better as the day went on, after being somewhat slow in the morning.)

That being said, yesterday I got a text and then a call from regular Mark I. (who I also consider a good friend,) about taking him out this afternoon.  My first thought, after thinking about the forecasted 99 degree high, was "that's crazy!"   However there is some sense to it - he has a beautiful older house that unfortunately has limited air conditioning and it was going to be too hot to do outside work today, and he would have sweltered indoors, so why not fish?  He knew the deal going into today.  Unfortunately, when the morning bite quit around 10:30 am or perhaps 11, that was IT.  For us anyways, they were pretty much lockjawed apart from some light hits.  I took Mark to a bunch of mid-lake areas and he did have a handful of hits and plenty of good chases on a bunch of colors, but he just could not connect.  He had to get home early so we cut the trip a half-hour short.  Good numbers of lakers were in mid-lake areas but they just weren't hitting for us.  The wind came up (finally) and made conditions tolerable.  My guess is that there was probably a short bite-window at some point in the evening.