Owasco Lake 8/14, Cayuga Lake 8/15 AM

8/14:  Got out on Owasco Lake with Mark I. for a full-day trip.  We were hoping to get out to Sodus Bay to check on the gar fly-fishing and then maybe give the lake a shot for Kings, but the weather forecast was calling for potentially high north winds in the afternoon.  Seneca would have been fun too, but I did not want to chance the winds.  Cayuga Lake is fishing great right now, but we were just out there on Monday, so we wanted to try something different.  As fate would have it, the weather forecast - in particular the wind-speed predictions were downgraded the night before.  Either way, we stuck with Owasco Lake.

The lake is in good shape right now with good water clarity.  We wound up having a slow day "catching" but a terrific afternoon of "fishing."   Mark started things off with a nice brown trout following in his jig on his first drop!  I think it hit lightly too, but I can't remember.  We also had chases from a rainbow.  Working downlake, he eventually nabbed a decent rainbow.  Then he hooked a nice brown that got off.  More of that to come...

In another area he nabbed a laker.  The real fun began when the wind picked up out of the north.  At that point, we were thankful that we weren't on Lake Ontario or Seneca Lake!   We had gusts into the low-20s.  Mark hooked up on a drift and wow, what a fight!  I saw his line shoot straight ahead horizontally and knew he had a good fish!  All of a sudden, we saw a big rainbow - around 25" to 27", jump out of the water!  Mark's jig head unfortunately wasn't in the fish's mouth after the jump!  Ouch!  The jump was 4' high!  Mark said it best, "that fish thinks he's Michael Jordan!   Then we had grabs and chases from some nice browns.  Mark had a hit, then a hook-up near the boat.  This brown was a slob - not as big as Leo's 14lber from last summer, but it was a solid 10 to maybe 12lb fish!  Unfortunately after it seemed like Mark had a good hook into it, it came unbuttoned.  (We don't need to mention the similarly sized brown from the prior drift that chased up his jig.) He also had a couple smallmouths hook up (over deep water) and they got off too - one after a boat side jump.  A handful of other hits and follows from browns were had.  So again, poor catching, but a great, memorable afternoon of fishing, leaving us with great memories and thoughts of what could have been, had these fish stayed buttoned!

All in all a fun day with a lot of late-day excitement!

Only a few dates remain open for August!   I have the 19th (Tuesday,) the 21st and 22nd (Thursday and Friday of next week) and the morning of Wednesday the 27th, then we're on to September!

8/15 Cayuga Lake out of Myers Park:  Today I guided 10-year-old Gavin, his father Justin and grandfather Jay for a 1/2-day trip starting just after 7 am.  Yesterday afternoon's strong northerly had me wondering where we were going to start today.  Gavin started us off near Myer's with a quick hookup on what was likely a good laker.  We may have had another hit in that stretch, but things didn't look too promising so we made a run.  In our next area, Justin dropped a good hook-up and then nailed a dink!  We kept trying different areas without too much going on.  I was about to move us yet again when Jay had a quick hook-up.  The fishing started improving and we even had a double going for a bit.  Justin has been out with me three times in the past if I'm not mistaken and wound up having the hot hand, nailing some lakers and a 25" rainbow.  The rainbow fought well, but had some kind of fin-rot.  It isn't something that I've seen much of before, but the tail fin was pretty worn away, and not from spawn-bed digging as far as I could tell.  Jay had some good opportunities but will have to wait until next time!  He had a massive rainbow trout under his black jig, but it didn't grab.  He had a hook-up while reeling up and thought that his reel had an issue, so he put down his rod and started looking for line-wraps!  Ouch!

Anyhow as I was filleting some fish, Gavin hooked up a 29" beauty that gave him as much as he could handle!  Justin also had a few late hookups.  We basically had a second good bite-window just as we were starting to pack it in.  80' to 120' today was best for us.