Guided Mark I. for a 6-hour trip getting underway just after 9:15 am. I am grateful to Mark and my other regulars that have made it possible for me to guide full-time going on over 21 years now! We were the only boat that launched out of Taughannock Park today and I only saw two other boats out on the lake, one being a friend/client of mine and the other was a working barge, so it was quiet out there. A few people were shorefishing both at the park and at another access.
We tried some areas that I had the guys on Sunday fish, along with some different ones. Mark wound up having a very good day. He managed to have a double-digit day with mostly brown trout along with a few lakers. The browns were mostly legal fish (and just under) and his best was 21" and probably 4.5lbs +. These fish are pigs! He also had lakers to 29". Bladebaits and jigs did the trick. We did not encounter lakers in any numbers comparable to what we had on Sunday, but he did tangle with more browns. I don't believe I have ever seen browns so dominant in the catch on Cayuga Lake this time of year in my 30+ years fishing the lake (both from shore and on my boat.) The fish are mostly 2-year olds running 14" to 16.5", but larger ones are around. Salmon numbers and abundance in Seneca Lake is much greater than what I'm seeing for browns on Cayuga Lake, but both lakes are fishing very well for those respective species. In a year or so, we're likely to have some very good winter brown fishing on Cayuga once those fish start hitting the 19" to 22" mark and running 3 to 4.5lbs! Should be some great fly-fishing too! We did not try deep for lakers, so it's very possible that the good numbers of fish we saw on Sunday just happened to move out a bit. But as the season progresses, I don't think they will be hanging around in large numbers. Ken from Sunday told me that they were eating alewives and very few gobies, so I think these were fish that were on the heavy bait fish numbers that were down here in November.
Fish caught today were all in pretty darn good shape and we were able to release all of the browns unharmed. The lake level remains good for this time of year. Surface temps are at 39 degrees. Cold weather and ice-fishing conditions return tomorrow night! It was great to get out for a few trips over the past week. In January in this region, if I do one trip - it's been a good January.
Skyler over at Silver Lake Marine tells me that we'll have six Crestliners on display at the Rochester Boat Show. Again, I'll be there on Friday afternoon/evening and then throughout most of the day on Saturday - that is January 30th and 31st.
