Reports 7/19 – 7/25

I am currently in the midst of a long run of trips.  We had forecasts for potentially heavy rain over the weekend of July 16th - 18th.  As is so often the case, most of the rain missed our area.

7/19 Cayuga Lake out of Dean's Cove:  Guided Alec and his son Dan, along with Evan for a 1/2 day trip starting at around 7:15.   I recently got my 2013 Crestliner back after my bearing failure at Skaneateles Lake on April 5th.  I was due for a new axle and I must give Repairs Plus in Auburn (by Turnpike Road) a lot of credit for 1.) finding an axle for me during the midst of this supply chain breakdown and 2.)  doing a fantastic job of getting my trailer back on the road.  The brakes work like new - since they are!  It is very tough to find places that do good work on boats and trailers.  Mark my words on that.

While my rig was on the lot at Repairs Plus, some wasps found that my cooling system water outlet was a nice place to start building a nest or fill with mud.  This put a bit of a damper on our trip's start.  On the day prior I took the boat over to Myers and made sure it started fine.  I forget to check the outlet!  Fortunately after running the motor off and on for a bit, it opened up.

The bite wasn't bad considering the algae bloom and murky water that we found in many areas.  We wound up with 5 or 6 nice lakers.  Alec has fished all over the place - especially in Alaska. His son Dan did a heck of a job hooking and landing fish - he's had quite a bit of experience fishing.

7/20 AM Cayuga Lake out of Dean's Cove:   Guided Erin and Bernie for a half day starting at 7 am.  The bite was tough today.  We tried a lot of areas - some with somewhat clear water and some that were murky or cloudy with algae.   Bernie is an experienced angler and made the best out of what we found.  He nabbed a couple nice lakers on the day.  Erin didn't fish as much but she did manage to hook a fish.

Onondaga Lake 7/21:  Guided Scott here for a full day starting at 6:30 am.  Despite the rain that the Syracuse area received, Onondaga was in remarkable shape.  I guided here once last year - also with Scott.  He wanted to try it again, given that we had such a tough start to our trip last time.  I fished the lake quite a bit in 2018 and 2019, (and once for gar in 2020 apart from guiding Scott.)   Bass fishing was excellent those years.  This lake tends to excel early in the season.  It slows down in late July/August.

Scott has really gotten into largemouth bass fishing - mainly via kayak in his home state of Virginia.  He has some awesome tackle and it was cool to cast the new Curado and try out the top notch Johnny Morris rod he had.  First I should mention that the new State Launch is excellent.  It does drop off steeply - so make sure your parking brakes are in good working order when launching.  Nobody was there when we launched - we had the lake to ourselves.

Fishing got off to a good start with Scott hooking a nice bass within around 20 minutes of casting.  Unfortunately the chunky fish got off.  I can't remember what it hit - maybe a Fluke.  He had a hit or two on a Senko.  We tried another area and saw a nice tiger musky doing the "head out of water" thing.  Scott landed a bass on a Johnson Siver Minnow, then nabbed one on a Senko.  His third one came on a shallow running crankbait.   All in all a tough day, but not bad.  We did manage to scrape together a few nice fish.  Water level seemed good - higher than last year.   We saw an Osprey dive three times for a fish.  We also saw a bald eagle.  It was a nice day on the lake.

Owasco Lake 7/22:  With Cayuga fishing tough on Tuesday, I told Ron that Owasco Lake would likely be a better bet.  Ron's had some terrific fishing with me in the past on Owasco Lake so he was game.  We (he) fished a 6 hour day and landed 17 nice lake trout.  Great day and I only took one bent rod photo.   He did hook one nice brown and also had a follow from one.

7/23 Cayuga Lake out of Long Point:  Guided Jeremy here for a full day.  He is a super passionate angler and has really been working the heck out of Cayuga Lake in his boat since he moved here.  Prior to living around here, he was in Maine for awhile and did his share of landlocked salmon fly-fishing as well as brook trout fishing.  Before that, he fly-fished the Buffalo area a lot.  He's been doing his own thing on Cayuga and it was great sharing information with him on his findings.

We wound up having good fishing on Cayuga with some nice lakers including a 31" wild fish.  He had follows from a brown or two.  He also had a favorite rainbow trout area that yielded a 27" + beauty for him!  So not bad fishing despite the continuing bloom and murky water areas.

7/24 Owasco Lake:  Guided Robert and his girlfriend Angel.  Angel's college friend Pamela came along for the ride and didn't fish.  The AM bite was tough on Owasco Lake.  We had a good southerly thermal and no action for awhile.  I was also having some electronics issues which I have since figured out, but that certainly didn't help.  We worked around the whole lake with zippo to show.  Rob finally got things going with a nice 17" to 18" pelagic smallmouth bass.  It was his best smallmouth bass to date.  His prior fishing had been the Adirondacks amongst other places up north.

Our fishing picked up later in the day and Rob nabbed the first lake trout of the trip.  After that, he caught a few more as did Angel.  Angel landed the best fish - a 29"er.  Slow start to the day, but we ended with a bang!

Rob has a few more photos from this trip which I will post once I get them.  Fun day and people could probably hear Angel's excitement from across the lake!

7/25  Owasco Lake:  Guided Dominiek, his son Herbert and Herbert's friend Bryce today for a full day trip that we cut short by around 90 minutes.  Dominiek has been fishing with me since around 2006 or 2008, back when Seneca Lake was smoking for lakers.  He likes to do this trip for his birthday which is in July.  During the past two years, it correlated with the (now) annual algae bloom and tougher fishing on Cayuga Lake.  We've done ok, but not spectacularly.  Today was spectacular fishing on Owasco Lake - a 10/10 on action for the first two hours.  I didn't have time to do anything other than net fish.  No re-rigging, nothing!  It was fish after fish after fish after fish.  Numerous doubles - maybe even a momentary triple.  It was similar to what we had on 7/13 with Scott and Steven (although we mainly targeted bass on that trip.)  In two hours the three guys landed around 25 lakers and one smallmouth.  We finished the day with 38 lakers and one bass.  A handful of lakers were also lost because I simply couldn't get to the net or be two places at once.  Insane morning bite!  It slowed down by 10 am, but we still had a steady pick throughout the whole trip.

Open dates are as follows:

July 31st.

August:  1st, 7th, 22nd, 27th, 29th - 31st.

September:  Most dates are available from September onwards.