Cayuga Lake out of Myers Park 6/17+18

6/17:  Guided Joe, Jimmy and Craig for a 1/2-day-trip starting at 7:30 am.  I sense that the bite is finally starting to come together on Cayuga Lake.  We are close to having a thermocline set up, which will concentrate the fish a bit more.  Hopefully the rain will scale back to a more normal level.  Hot temperatures are forecast going into next week and that surely will get the thermocline set up.

Last time we were out jigging with Joe and Jimmy, Joe wound up taking one for the team, having a relatively slow day.  He had the hot hand today landing 5 nice lakers.  Craig wound up dropping what was probably the fish of the day about 30 feet away from the boat - it was a large rainbow trout.  This was Craig's first jigging trip with me, although he's jigged for walleyes and other species in the past.  Jimmy nabbed a nice laker as well.  So it wasn't a double-digit day, but what made today very encouraging was the sheer number of hits and dropped fish we had.  The guys easily had a dozen or more hits and short hook-ups to add to the fish landed.  Fish bit throughout the trip, which was also encouraging.  We worked water from 40' out to 90' today.  A lot of bait was around as well.  Water clarity was around 4' give or take.  Debris is mostly gone.

6/18 AM out of Myers Park:  Today I guided Mike aka MP and his son Mike.  It was their first trip out with me, and given how inconsistent the bite and weather has been over the past two months, we worked together to try to find a decent day to fish.  The guys drove up from quite a ways away and I didn't want to struggle with the weather/water conditions or the fishing.  Our plan worked out and the guys wound up having a great introduction to Cayuga Lake's lake trout and the jigging.

Mike (Jr.) loves to fish and within a 1/2-hour of the trip he had landed his first lake trout, a 24"er.  He was very impressed with the fight!  We had steady, fair action until around 11 am or so, when Mike nabbed a 30"+ fish.  After that, things slowed down as the lake calmed down and the sun came out.  Seven nice fish were landed and a couple lost.  No definite rainbows hooked today, although Mike did drop a fish that was fighting a bit "differently" - it was probably a laker.  40' to around 75' was probably best for us today.  Limetreuse continues to produce for us.  The guys kept everything apart from the largest fish and they all were fairly stuffed with alewives.  One fish came up with a live lamprey attached.  Overall fishing pressure was light on the lake, although quite a few bass boats were zipping around.  There's obviously a tournament, or two or three or four this weekend as usual.