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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 4/10/2007
Posts: 372
Location: Northeast PA
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Had a good weekend on cayuga lake but we have been seeing alot of small lakers for about 2 or 3 weeks now. I've seen this happen other years and wonder if the migration of the mature lakers towards the spawning areas down south leave the younger fish that aren't ready to spawn further north where we have been fishing ,north of long point . Always good to see the next year class of fish though !! Any thoughts ?
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 6/8/2006
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Location: Arcade,NY
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Big lakers are tough to get right now. its normal to catch small fish during the summer months. . we might see one more short feeding spell before they shut down for spawning. its the same fishing on Seneca right now. dink after dink. the dinks can be tough to get if you cant find them. the fleas are just about gone. I wish we could get some cool weather soon. this heat is for the birds.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 5/31/2006
Posts: 1,792
Location: Trumansburg NY
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I think that's what's happening Bruce. I think Seneca Lake in particular and to a lesser extent Cayuga have different populations of lake trout. A lot of the fish follow around the big schools of alewives. Other fish are more localized and maybe territorial. I don't know. Around Geneva in the late spring and summer the area loads with bait and larger fish - even when Seneca's bait numbers were low, a lot of quality fish came from that area. Other lakers may just feed on what's available in their area - sculpins, young perch, etc... The largest fish are typically the ones following the baitfish. The trolling guys on LOU were hammering big lakers at the S. end of Seneca in May, then they couldn't catch them down there in June. We hammered them in June up north. It's completely possible that those fish moved 35 miles in a few weeks. For fish, that's nothing!
BTW - Certain areas of the lakes hold smaller fish. I have places on Cayuga that routinely yield 15" lakers. If all you fished were those areas, you'd be convinced that Cayuga didn't hold many big fish.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 3/2/2007
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Cayuga's bigger lakers have been suspended over deep water with the baitfish for the last month or so.
One charter is averaging 30 fish a trip for the month of July and recently took a 12 lb laker. I am told the spoon bite has been dead- flashers and flies are knocking theit socks off....
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Location: Trumansburg NY
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There are nearly always some big fish in "jigging range" too - right on the bottom at the thermocline or not far from it. We've had and know of some very nice lakers being jigged up in Cayuga recently too.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 4/10/2007
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Location: Northeast PA
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The smaller lakers just started to show up in the past few weeks or so , were fishing the same spots that we started fishing earlier this season . We were on nice 29'' laketrout earlier on and now there are the small ones mixed in and fewer big fish ,we are still over big schools of bait though . So I was thinking maybe the mature larger fish with the spawning -migration instinct moved south and left the smaller non spawning lakers behind .This was one of the best years we had early on , no problem trying finding scattered fish this year in deeper water, its been very good steady fishing and good big fish , until now were seeing more small ones. I've been trying to put off the longer runs down the lake as long as there were good fish closer to the dock , but I think its time to head south , maybe I will run into copperliner and find out where the real big ones are !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Cayuga fish are starting to show signs of the impending spawn - the males have heavily developed milt and the female eggs are starting to mature and get bigger. I guided out of Sampson today and my guys caught smaller lakers - 19" to 24" fish, though they lost a big one. Cayuga is showing good numbers of lakers already around Taughannock. I like this time of year, since there's great fishing near my place. Taughannock's been good for awhile from what I've heard.
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