Guided Matthew and his son Eli for a 1/2-day trip getting underway at 7:30 am. We had a bit of low-lying fog in the area, but fortunately the lake was clear. We had a decent bite in the morning which slowed into a "slow steady" bite before we wrapped up around 11:45 am. This trip was for 13-year old Eli and I was thrilled to see him catch a nice 22.5" wild rainbow and a good lake trout. He also dropped a couple of fish. Matt landed some decent lake trout to round out the day. We harvested our catch today and the cleaned fish had one to two fresh alewives in them for the most part. The fish have not been feeding heavily from what I've seen, and the recent shorter bite-windows confirm this. There's a ton of bait around, so I'm not sure what's up.
Late-July to mid-August fishing thus far for us on Cayuga Lake has been fair to good. We've had a couple of excellent days, but overall the lake is not fishing as great as some past years, with the exception of the rainbow trout fishing, which has been excellent. The fishing to me is reminiscent of July angling during the pre-bloom years, with fish in August locations. We haven't had any super-tough days, so I'm not complaining. In past years double-digit half-days were fairly common for us in August, this season so far, we haven't had many of those.
I'm looking forward to seeing how the fishing progresses once the nights start cooling down and we get more wind. Owasco Lake remains slow from what few reports I've had from over there. I haven't heard anything lately on Seneca Lake, but have a couple of trips scheduled there this week. Tomorrow is open for a last minute booking! After that I have the 24th - 29th and 31st of August open and then we're into September.
