Got out on Monday on a whim and then guided a full-day trip on Tuesday:
9/8 Midday: After having some fun dropshotting smallmouth bass on Seneca Lake last month, I thought I'd give Cayuga Lake a try since I had a few days off this week. Since the smallmouth bass population more or less collapsed here in the late-2000s, I don't target them here anymore. The die-off around 2008 was most likely due to the VHS virus. Four years later, Round Gobies invaded the lake via the canal system, and since then the smallmouth fishing has become worse and worse. Yes, you might catch a 7lber here, or perhaps a new State Record, but that doesn't mean that the smallmouth fishing is good here. The NY State American Eel record was set here on Cayuga Lake in 1984. It was a freak fish caught by Larry Manino while bullhead fishing by Cayuga Lake State Park. I haven't heard of another American Eel caught in the lake since and NY State has retired that record, since American Eel numbers have dropped and some of the fisheries have been closed. We used to routinely encounter smallmouth bass while laker jigging here back around 2008. After the goby invasion, we would occasionally catch them in November while targeting trout/salmon with tube-jigs and bladebaits. Back in the late-1990s and early-2000s, I loved smallmouth bass fishing this lake! We often caught them in the summer while casting for largemouths and then in the fall, the fishing was very good for nice smallmouths averaging 14" to 18" long.
These days, pros catch smallmouth bass on Cayuga using two main methods: 1.) Trying to spot them on their spawning beds from May through Mid-July, and 2.) Using live-scope sonar and "scoping" the main structural features of the lake. You aren't hooking a crayfish, worm or minnow on the end of your line and drifting for bass here like anglers did right up until the early 2000s. Those days are long gone. You can do that on Skaneateles Lake though and on Oneida Lake.
I didn't give the fishing a very hard try, but gave it around 3 hours midday. I had maybe two or three hits - all of which felt like Round Gobies. We did have a cold front move through. It was also a cloudless day, but you'd think that if the smallmouth fishing was good, I'd at least catch a dink or two. Nope. I brought some largemouth tackle and did some casting and pitching as well. I'd forgotten how much fun that was, even though I didn't try for long, nor have any action. Bass fishing is like golf, you need to keep at it and go regularly to stay "in-tune."
9/9: Today I guided Rick and his old college buddies both named Gary. Rick had a gorgeous Lund, which he ran for a decade. He recently sold it and will be moving out of the area, and then coming up in the summer for a couple of months annually. He first went out with me back around 2007, when we targeted deep lakers out of Dean's Cove. Since then, he's fished with me a bunch of times and we've kept in touch.
Fishing today started out hot with big Gary and Rick having the hot hands. Rick was using a blade-bait and nabbed a small rainbow, as well as a couple of good lake trout. Big Gary caught some mambo lakers! Eventually, the other Gary got into the action with a big one as well as some smaller fish. All in all, we had a good double-digit day, although the fishing slowed quite a bit around 11 am or noon. Smaller Gary had most of the late action, although Big Gary did get quite a few hits at well. Water temps remain around 68 to 70 degrees on top. We had lake trout today from 80' or so out to over 150' of water! I wasn't paying close attention - I was either filleting a fish or rigging something and the guys were hooking up - I checked the sonar and sure enough, we were deep. Those fish were suspended just at or below the thermocline. Of course, any troller can tell you that this is a frequent occurrence and a lot of them prefer to fish suspended fish all summer, but for jigging, it's not what I try to do.
