We're now roughly 2+1/2 to 3 weeks away from the start of the lake trout spawn on Cayuga Lake. The fishing remains good. Plenty of rainbow trout along with some brown trout and landlocked salmon are around as well. With the sameness in the weather, the fishing has been consistent for the most part with fair to good numbers of fish being caught most days along with the odd slower day and hot day. Today I had Matt on board, who will be in Ithaca over the next 2 years or so. He was hoping to get a feel for Cayuga Lake as well as learn some shore fishing spots here and on other area waterways, so that's what I showed him. I took him to some area shore fishing locations and went over access and methods.
After taking care of that, we set up. Lake trout bit pretty well for us early on, with Matt landing a couple fish right off of the bat. Yesterday we had a bunch of older, large fish; today the fish were younger and smaller. The AM winds (i.e., "thermals") were not what they had been on most mornings when I'd been out. Once they died down - and they did fairly quickly for us, the bite got tougher. However Matt did managed to hook and land a nice salmon! I didn't measure it (I should have...) but it appeared to be around the 20" mark. After that, he had some short hits along with a large rainbow trout that grabbed his jig just below the surface. But no doubt, our bite got tougher closer to noon. The clouds moved in and the winds picked up a bit, but it didn't seem to make too much of a difference.
