Guided Paul and his sons Joshua and Jacob today for just under a full-day trip. My full-days generally run 8 hours, today we wound up after 7 - the guys loved the fishing but had a 2 hour drive to get to their next destination. Fishing today was excellent throughout the day. We never had a lull. The guys doubled up at least three times. Paul caught a beautiful wild female rainbow that was around 24"+. The fishing was terrific and we never saw another boat on the water until we headed back to Myers and the Cornell Sailing Team was out, but not a single motor boat, kayak or anything.
The guys are all avid anglers and Joshua does a bit of kayak fishing in the Finger Lakes Region. We had a good number of wild fish today. Keep in mind, that fin-clipping ended a few years back, so all fish in the future will be unclipped and it will be hard to tell what's wild and what isn't. But we had some larger wild specimens, that's for sure. No sign of lamprey wounding apart from long healed-up scars.
The weather held up for us today and we had some light rain, but most of the rain stayed to the north of us. The bite started out excellent as the rain showers moved past the north of us, but after the "hot and heavy" bite, the fishing just kept going with a nice steady pace. We had miles of good fishing and caught fish on both sides of the lake, from 65' or so out to 145'. Some fish have already spawned and are back on the feed. I expect DEC Propagation Netting to begin on Monday and it'll likely be over with by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. Surface temperatures remain up around 66 or so degrees.
