Reports Cayuga/Seneca Lakes 8/13, 14, 15 AM

Guided Cayuga Lake out of Myers Park over the past three days.  Yesterday - on the 15th, I did an AM trip out of Sampson State Park on Seneca Lake, took a little break and then guided a PM trip out of Myers on Cayuga Lake.

8/13 AM:  Guided Dan and his sister Kristi for a half-day starting just after 7:20 AM.  I picked them up at their rental just north of Frontenac Point.  The bite was a little bit tentative in the morning.  Actually, the past three days have all been like that.  Lots of fish around, chasing and mostly hitting short, up until the morning thermal dies down, then the bite picks up markedly.  It's probably a light penetration issue or something like that.  Anyways, our fishing was fair and not quite up to par with what I expect and like to see on Cayuga Lake going into mid-August.  Dan has fished with me around once a year for some time now, and he got us going.  His sister did wind up landing an old 32" laker that we released.  We kept a couple 24" to 26" fish today.  I think we had around a half-dozen fish landed on the morning.

I had a good time with Dan and Kristi - both are scientists.  Kristi grew up with a bunch of brothers and could really dish it out!  Fun morning!

8/13 PM:  My PM trip was with John and his nephews, Kyle and Kevin.  The north wind came up a bit in-between my AM and PM trips.  We made a run north of Myers and on the west side of the lake and were able to avoid some of the chop and wind.  It paid off with some pretty solid fishing.  The guys missed/lost some rainbows - a lot of rainbow trout are around this year, which is great and similar to the last 7 or 8 years.  Lakers showed us some love today and the guys did well.  Again, we were around 5 to 6 fish for the trip.  Not hot and heavy fishing, but fairly solid.  Kevin had the hot hand between the brothers.  I expect the fish gods to reward Kyle next week for his effort on today's trip.

8/14 AM:  This morning I guided my good friend Todd, his buddy Jay and Jay's 86 (or was it 87) year-old dad, Paul.  If I make it to that age, I sure hope I'm in the shape Paul was in - it was impressive!  Jay really loves Seneca Lake and has a big history there, so that's why we fished it.  Fishing was somewhat tough, as Seneca circa 2024 has been.  My hunch is that the alewife numbers are still out of balance with the predator base.  DEC has increased lake trout stocking and we'll see more balance over the next few years, but we also have an exploding population of round goby here, so that's another factor, but I digress...

Paul got us started out with a nice laker around 23" if I remember correctly.  Jay had some hits and momentary hookups.  Leave it up to Todd, who is probably the most competitive person I know (in a good way) to "get 'er done" out here on tough Seneca.  I call him "two-rod Todd" because his way of jigging is to cast another jig out as his first one hits bottom, so he's fishing twice as effectively as most people!  He nabbed two lakers - one sublegal and one legal, along with a nice rainbow trout today.  The bow was around 18" or so.  So not a great catch overall, but at least we (mainly Todd!) were able to make something happen.  A decent number of salmon chased in Todd's lures today - both small and decent (22" range) fish.  Things are looking very promising on Seneca Lake for the future!   We caught fish on both side of the lake around Sampson to Dresden.  Friends report continued good trolling action on salmon, browns, occasional rainbows and a few lakers on Seneca from Long Point south to Watkins Glen.  This lake is coming back slowly but surely.  Very few signs of lamprey attacks are being seen on fish here.

8/14 PM:  After a quick bite to eat, stop at a produce stand and then my apartment, I was back at Myers Park at 2:15 pm to meet Don and his son Klay.  They are both avid anglers and Klay really impressed me.  Don has some background in western NY.  Klay loves to fish spotted bass where they live in North Carolina on a couple well-known lakes.

From the way the day was setting up, I had a good feeling we'd be into a good afternoon/evening of fishing and we were.  Don had the hot hand to start and nabbed a couple lakers and a decent rainbow.  Klay wound up getting the best fish of the day - a 29" lake trout that fought very well.  Don also nabbed a 22" landlocked salmon.  That's the first one we've seen on the boat this year, although I've heard of a few others being hooked and/or landed, but not many.  (Seneca is showing a lot of young salmon and future prospects look excellent over there.)

One of the highlights of the trip was Klay having a very nice rainbow chase his swimbait (known as a "shad" in Europe) right up to the surface.  Klay did the right thing and dropped in right back down and the rainbow appeared to grab it!  Unfortunately when Klay went to set the hook, the fish wasn't there.  Close but no cigar!

8/15 AM:  Back on Cayuga Lake this AM with Tony and his son Angelo.  The guys are very casual anglers who were staying at an Airbnb nearby.   We started just after 7:50 am after the guys had forgotten to purchase licenses.  NY State makes it easy to get one right on your smartphone or via a phone call, so the days of a quick trip to Walmart or Bass Pro Shops are over with, thankfully.  So we weren't delayed too much.

As has been the case for much of this week, and a lot of August/September fishing in general, the bite first thing in the morning was a little slow.  We had plenty of fish everywhere we went, plenty of chasers and a lot of hits, but not a lot of solid grabs.  I coached the guys a bit and before long,  Tony had his first lake trout, which was his biggest fish to date.  Angelo missed some fish but eventually got one.  Just as the thermal died and the hook-ups started coming, the guys let me know that they were ready to leave!  Tony's wife and daughters were at their rental without a car, so it was time to take off.  They were very happy with their two fish which they'll be having for dinner, so it was a very easy day for me.  It's tough for someone like me as a fisherman to just "up and go" like that, but when you're guiding it's all about the clients and not you!  I think we could have a had a very solid half-dozen to dozen or more fish this morning had we completed the half-day trip.

Overall this week, our depths for laker fishing have been around 85' to maybe 120'.  Surprisingly, the landlocked salmon from yesterday came from 120' and according to Don, it came just off of the bottom!  Rainbows can be anywhere and have been suspended for the most part.  We haven't seen many browns, but have not been in good areas for them either.  Best colors for us have been white/chartreuse in various combinations and black.  Our good laker on Seneca Lake came on a 3.75" Lunker City Shaker in Limetreuse.  Todd's fish came on a white Money Minnow if I remember correctly.

I have Saturday August 24th still open, as well as the 26th through the 29th.  Then we're off to September, where my schedule is still fairly open.