Cayuga Lake out of Long Point State Park 6/25 AM

I was back out for Day 3 with the Mariano clan.  Today I had 12-year-old Matt (soon to be 13,) his dad Steve and uncle David.  We started at 7 am with sunny conditions, light to no wind and some clouds, but not many.  The fishing was somewhat slow to start, with good numbers of fish and baitfish, but half-hearted chases and hits.  Young Matt got us rolling with a 19" or 20" laker that we released.  A couple hits were missed and things appeared to slow right down.  We tried some other areas on both sides of the lake with similar results.  A run downlake proved interesting.  Steve lost a good fish that he hooked in deeper water than hit halfway down.  It was a good laker. We heard some splashing and fish surfacing and kept an eye on it.  Over deep water, there was a bit of commotion.  At first I thought it was perhaps a big rainbow trout or landlocked salmon up on the surface, likely dying of a lamprey attack.   Although fish don't appear to notice attached lampreys, I have seen trout and salmon jumping in order to shake lampreys off that are attached up in their gills.  These salmonids likely don't know what lampreys are, but they feel something there.   We motored over to "the fish" and it disappeared for a bit, but then came back up again.  It looked dark and large!  Was it a big sturgeon?  A closer look revealed a small group of good-sized freshwater drum!  They were spawning up on the surface in about 135' of water!  I never would have expected that!  Guide friend Kurt Hoefig saw a ton of drum spawning in Oneida Lake around a week to maybe 10 days ago- they were around shoals and of course, shallower water. Apparently they spawn on the surface with a bunch of males prodding a female.  This usually happens in 65 to 70 degree water, which is around what we had on top - or certainly within the top five feet of the water column.  Anyhow, Oneida Lake has a large drum population.  Cayuga Lake has a decent drum population as well, but nowhere near Oneida's per acre.  I was still very surprised to see them spawning mid-lake out over deep water.  Insane!!! We had maybe a half an hour when some wind came up along with some mostly cloudy skies and we hit a small bite window, which quickly shut down, then happened again before we concluded our trip.  We had a tough day today with 4 lakers landed and a couple lost.  The fish had a few alewives in their stomachs, but fewer yet than yesterday's fish, which was fewer than the previous day's catch. I've had my Fish Hawk TD temperature probe pretty much since they became available.  I'm guessing at least 10 to maybe 12 years.  So I don't have much water column temperature information from before that.  The probes were awkward to use.  At first I had a Cabelas "Cline-Finder" which was only 50' long.  Then I bought a Fish Hawk probe with coated wire that was quite a bit better.  My main point here, is that this is the latest I can remember in the calendar year without a thermocline.  This is keeping trout scattered!!!  It's easy to catch a couple if they are hitting and you're in the right area, but we have lake trout (and other salmonid) friendly temperatures throughout much of the lake running from (at times) 35' down to well over 100' down.  There's also bait in many of those same areas.  So there's nothing to concentrate the fish.  The good news, is that the algae bloom usually follows the formation of the thermocline by one to two weeks, so there's zero signs of that and the lake is beautiful and clear.  It's been a very challenging, yet interesting season to date.  Stay tuned!