Guided Day 4 of my 4-day run with the Marianos. Today I had the same crew as yesterday, 12-year old Matthew, his father Steve and Uncle David. We started at 7 am with overcast, somewhat threatening conditions. As was the case yesterday, young Matt came through with the first two lakers! Both hit an alewife colored Lunker City Swimfish if I remember correctly. We dealt with some good rain for maybe 20 minutes and then had decent conditions and even a nice north wind (perfect for drifting) for a little bit. A few hits were had and dropped and then Steve came through with a 20" rainbow trout caught on a discontinued black Lunker City Shaker. Rainbows love black! I wonder if guys on Lake Ontario ever run black lures while trolling? It'd be interesting to see how they would work. David had missed/dropped a handful of fish over the past two days but fortunately hooked and landed a solid laker today. He had another hit before we called it a day. It was a slow steady bite today. Fish never went bonkers for us, but they showed some signs of being in a positive mood - certainly when compared to some of the fishing we've seen this year. I would say that the fish were perfectly neutral.
There's still no thermocline on Cayuga Lake. Angling/boating pressure was very light. Tuesday July 1st remains open as does the 4th, 5th, 7th and 10th. The rest of my openings, along with these are listed under another post under the reports heading ("Availability Moving Forward.") It's been a very interesting season so far, and we'll see how things play out in July. The four fish I cleaned today apart from the rainbow all contained fresh alewives - much more so than yesterday's fish.
