Reports 6/30 – 7/5

The good news on Cayuga Lake is that as of this writing on July 5th, there are no signs of any algae blooms on the lake (that I'm aware of.)  We've had some cool temperatures, cool rain and plenty of wind.  The negatives are that for trollers, the water fleas are pretty thick and weedmats along with some debris have been floating around.  Overall the July bite remains strong.

Keep in mind that I am available this Saturday and Sunday for trips.  All that's left for July fishing are 7/10, 7/11, 7/24 and 7/31.

In August I have the 1st, 4th, 7th - 8th, 15th, 21st - 22nd, 27th - 31st.

September and onwards are wide open!  Now's the time to reserve dates.

6/30 AM:  Guided Steve, Tyler and Tyler's young son Owen starting just after 6:30 am.  Fishing was slow to start and for much of the morning.  Owen had the first fish of the day on for a few moments but it got off.  Then Tyler dropped what was likely a big salmon or rainbow.  Eventually Steve came through with a laker and then the fishing improved.  We finished the morning with around 7 or 8 fish if I remember correctly.

6/30 PM:  My afternoon trip was with Dennis and his two boys Luke and Evan.  We knew we had a good chance of strong thunderstorms so we had to make the best of our time.  The lake trout bite was hot and heavy for the first 90 minutes of so of our trip and we landed a dozen nice fish.  We also had a double or two hooked up.  Incoming storms and heavy rain curtailed our trip by about an hour.

7/1 AM:  Guided Will starting around 8 am.  He was a bit "under the weather" thus the late start.  We tried areas that favored rainbows, browns and salmon without luck.  We finished up with around 4 lakers to at least get some good action.

7/1 PM:  Guided Mike, his son Michael and their friend Eric. As luck would have it, while fishing the area that I'd just had Will working, Michael nabbed a 27" rainbow!   The fish was a hatchery (clipped) fish with a good sized lamprey on it.  We kept it and it weighed in at 7lbs, a bit thin for that length of rainbow trout most likely due to the lamprey.  We had a good bite throughout the afternoon with a dozen lakers landed on top of the rainbow.

7/2 AM:  Guided Will again, this time focusing on lakers.  Fishing was very solid and Will landed 10 nice fish up to over 30" long.  I'm a big fan of targeting lakers and picking off "bonus fish" - i.e. salmon, browns and rainbows, when we can.  Overall that's a strategy that keeps the rods bent and clients happy.  In most instances day in and day out trolling is more efficient for targeting rainbows and salmon.

7/3 AM:  Guided Zach and his friend Kirk for a rainy half day starting around 7:45 am.  We had around a 50% chance of rain, but I can say that whatever rain we had in the area seemed to hit us.  We didn't care - the fishing was fantastic!  The guys landed 20 lakers up to 32" long!   Tough to beat that for a half day's fishing (around 4 hours +.)

7/4 midday:  The last thing I wanted to do was guide the middle of the day on July 4th!  But at 10 am I had a phone call from Mike, whom I hadn't guided in years.  He was all set to fish this AM in his Starcraft with his son Bryce  (whom I basically taught to fish when he was around 11 years old in 2005!), when he found out he had a dead battery.  I'd had a relaxing morning so why not do the trip.  Fishing wasn't easy but the guys landed 4 nice trout.   That was just what they wanted for dinner, so everything worked out.  Coming back into Myers Park wasn't as bad as I expected.

7/5 AM:  Guided Tim and his brother in-law Bob, whom I picked up via boat at Taughannock.  Steady winds have really been shifting water plateaus around.  On the way back in at noon I saw a woman with three lakers on a stringer, all caught from shore!   Lakers like cold water, so it was obviously cold inshore!  Surface temps were in the low 70s.  Stringing up lakers on the surface is a good way to spoil fish.  I informed her of that, so hopefully she bought a bag of ice and cooled those fish down.

Fishing was tough for us this AM.  The guys did a great job landing what they hooked and we wound up with 4 nice lakers to 29" long.  We covered a lot of water today.