Guided a full-day trip here with Mark I. We started at 9 am and fished until 4:30 pm. Mark mostly fly-fished today, although he did some drop-shot fishing along with jerkbaits - both soft and hard. Fishing was decent for us today. It wasn't as hot a bite as on Tuesday, but we still had reasonable action. Mark started off on the fly with a couple real dinks - bass around the 6" range. It's great to see young fish over here. When I first moved to the Ithaca area from Rochester NY, my friends and I used to encounter tons of young smallmouth bass on Cayuga Lake. They would be right in the marina area at Taughannock and many casts both a mile or two north and south of the park would result in young smallmouths chasing in our offerings. These days, we never see young smallmouths on Cayuga.
Mark had some bigger fish under his flies at times. We did some drop-shotting and caught decent numbers of bass and rock bass. No big smallmouths but action was good. He went back to the streamers and started getting bit and nabbed a couple nice 16" range fish. Later on with a jerkbait, Mark landed another good smallmouth that had 5 to 6 others around it. They were clearly roaming the area in groups but weren't as abundant or as active (positive) as they were on Tuesday - nevertheless, it was still a solid day.
I saw more boats in the parking lot as we packed it in than I'd seen here in quite some time. Lakefront owners are pulling their boats and docks out now. Foliage is getting more vibrant by the day. Fall is here and we'll be into winter before we know it! Lake temp was around 68 today.
