Guided Mark I. today for a full-day trip getting underway around 7:45 am. As we slowly motored down the outlet at Emerson Park, it was very apparent that the morning southerly thermal was blowing hard! We had a slow run down the lake with some 2' to 3' waves. Don't let anybody tell you that the smaller Finger Lakes can't get rough - they certainly can.
It was a bit choppy for productive fly-fishing so we set up with gear for pike. Our first area didn't produce much until the end of our drift, when Mark tied into a beautiful pike. After a good fight, I slipped the net under a 37"er! It was fat too, and Mark felt it was heavier than his previous best fish at 39". Conditions weren't great for pike, but he did nab a couple more in the 25" range. Like I mentioned before, it's good to see some young fish here. We certainly haven't seen many pike - old or young, on Cayuga's southern portions in a long time.
I had Mark try some jerkbaits for bass for maybe an hour in one area. He lost one near the boat and also landed a couple nice perch including a 13"er. Later on, we set up for trout jigging and he caught an undersized rainbow. Our last area resulted in some nice lake trout including a couple 25" to 26" post-spawn fish plus a 19"er that he kept for dinner. It was a perfect day to be out and water temps were at 57 degrees. We saw maybe another 5 or 6 boats out on the water during the course of the day.
