PCPete

Thanks for the suggestion @rustyrat. I may pick one of those up and return the Shimano Caenan Baitcaster Reel I bought the other day... It has fast retrieve but a really crappy drop system and drops very slowly compared to my other baitcaster. I thought all I had to look for was gear ratio but I took for advantage the features to change the drop speed on my main one... Hopefully the Pen Jigmaster has a good system that lets the reel free-flow down and allows you to simply control the speed with your thumb. Sounds like you did well @guff - I got my new hummingbird 386CI installed last night and cant wait to try it out. I'll be going out tonight to give it a test run on Cayuga and then early tomorrow morning as well. Hopefully it works as advertised and I can see both the fish any my jig! - Will keep you guys posted. PS. If anyone wants to join me tonight for a Jigging trip up to the power plant, just shoot me a PM. Thanks again for all the help/advice.

Wow, I didn't know that... Thanks Guff, I have always though that to be successful jigging you have to be completely vertical but this is a good backup option for sure. I will try this method out when standard Jigging methods fail in the future. Got my new FF last night - after 2 hours of analyzing every detail at bass pro I decided on the Hummingbird 386CI model. Quite a few people I have asked say that color screens are better for Jigging and I have 30 days to make up my mind for sure. The 5" screen would have been nice but if you really can see your Jig better on color, then its worth the sacrifice made. Now to work out how to mount the new transducer properly...

Ill start this out by saying I'm unsure if my fish finder is currently giving me reliable accurate data on whats going on down there but a new one is on order and so i'm hoping for better results in the future. Due to how life goes sometimes I didn't end up getting out there until around 2:30pm yesterday and to save you time reading this - 0 fish in the boat. Went to the power plant first and found scattered bait all around... lots of algae and seaweed all over there... was quite a mess between the two. Marked a few fish on the bottom and alot of scattered bait but after jigging for around two hours with no hits decided to move on. Headed for Taughannock. Trolled around looking for bait pods but didn't find anything of size. Passed by some other guys Jigging but they had just got there 20 minutes before and hadn't caught anything yet either. Tried Jigging there for around an hour and after no hits, decided to move on and head for the salt plant. Ended up getting there around 5ish and found a little bait, had a few short hits (I think) but still no fish in the boat. Decided to call it around 6 and put my new Hummingbird 386ci on order. - Hope for better results next time.

Also here is a great post I found useful when starting to lean how to Jig for Lakers... took me a little while to get the hang of it but once you know what to look for on the Fish Finder, what mode to have it in to find it, and what gear to use to be successful you can pick it up pretty quick. I have had great success with the Jigs that hermit sells on the site Pete posted above. http://www.lakeontariounited.com/fishing-hunting/index.php/topic/30613-cayuga-624/?hl=%2Bjigging+%2Bfish+%2Bfinder#entry188950 -Pete

Agreed - I will no longer be going out tomorrow and instead hit up the stream - thanks to all who replied and saved me the unsatisfying trip in the wind and cold. I had not looked at the weather yet...

Hey all, I am looking to go out jigging on Cayuga tomorrow for the first time this year. I have never gone jigging this early in the year before and so I have no idea where to look for the fish as far as depth goes. Any advice is welcome Thanks -Pete

Well it seems my beginners luck has died off or I have yet to work out this great art... not sure which... 9/1 - Went out at 6am - Started out at Taughannock but didn't mark too many fish and could not find good bait pods so we went over to AES and tried jigging for 2 hours or so... didn't get any in the boat and the wind picked up hard... so we switched to trolling and managed to land one laker back over by Taughannock trolling about 120 FOW. Called it quits around 12:00pm 9/2 - Didn't get out early but decided to try out the "nighttime bite" as they call it... Started over north of Taughannock around 5pm or so but no fish in the boat by 7pm so we called it and went over to AES... wind wasn't too bad and my new drift buckets seemed to help a little... still gotta get em dialed in though... the wind was pushing us directly off shore so it was hard to maintain a good depth line... most fish marked were at around 120 FOW and we didn't find any boat pods... Called it quits well after dark around 9:00pm and headed back to Myers... fished there from 9:15ish to 11ish and called it quits... marked alot of fish at Myers but no takers... 9/3 - Results are in and we ended up with 1 brown around 17" just south of AES (threw it back to grow bigger). We marked alot of fish but only ended up with the one before the weather got crazy... Fish came around 7:30ish and a few other guys I talked to coming in agreed the bite died for them around 8ish... Anyhow my first brown trout and first fish with my buddy from Binghamton on our 3rd trip jigging.

Thanks for the report. Ill be out there 6am early tomorrow morning - not sure what the boat looks like yet as one of my new buddies who usually goes trolling and has a boat docked at myers said he wants me to teach em how to catch em Jiggin. Look for the lucky Mountain Dew hat though. Hope the bite is better then last Sunday (8/26)... fished from 6am - 3pm and ended up with no fish in the boat at all.

Awesome report I have never caught a salmon before but I have seen a few of your reports using a dead/live sawbelly's and a slip bobber. I may give it a try with that sort of rig but feel free to let me know if there is another setup I could try out. I plan to be out both tomorrow and Sunday morning this weekend early (6am). I may even go out tonight to experiment with this "evening bite" I keep hearing about (around Myers park area). I have been reluctant to go below 90 foot of water looking for the bait/fish but after your report I may start at 80 FOW. I think I have a mental condition I refer to as Depth Bias, Thinking that the bigger fish will be in deeper water all the time. They also have 89 Octane E0 at Wilcox General Store in Aurora - My engines also love the E0. I am curious what Octane rating the gas from Fastrac is? Thanks again!

I for one am very happy this site exists and grateful to the people like @Guff and @Hermit who openly share information and answer questions with full details. I have lived next to the lake for 3 years now and had never caught anything but perch and bass before this year... I always assumed catching Lakers required heavy equipment and professional training... Also any other method to catch Lakers like Jigging was some kind of secret and you had to know the right people to learn how to catch fish that way. Earlier this year I came across a post by Hermit and that perception changed... Anyone who has seen the reports Iv posted knows this year I have caught a good number of Lake Trout while Jigging and I will say as a result, this has been the best year of my fishing life on Cayuga. I want to thank all those who posted detailed screenshots of fish finders and guides on what Jigs to use and how to use them.... I think the guides on Hermit's site really made the difference for me and I'm now in the process of teaching my buddies how to catch fish Jigging. Hell, yesterday a guy was putting his boat in as we were putting ours on the trailer. He saw the one laker we kept and said how do u catch fish like that... I saw he had a few poles in his boat, his 8ish year old son with him and a fishfinder, so I told him where I was, gave him my 2 minute tutorial about how to Jig for Lakers, handed him some of Alec's jigs out of my box and wished him luck... Sharing information is what makes this site awesome...

Hit the water about 6am from Myers with my Buddy (his first time Jigging). We went straight up to AES and it was a tough wind when we got out there... its hard to be Jigging in strong wind, as you drift so fast it seems near impossible to keep your Jig vertical without some kind of motor. Found lots of bait right away but the wind made it almost impossible to stay ontop of it.. Bait was all over at around the 100FT mark. The wind died down as the morning progressed and it became a little easier to keep the Jig's vertical longer... We fished from 6am - 10:30ish and manged to catch two very small Lakers... I didn't measure them but i'm sure the smallest of them was around 10" er so. We boated a total of 3 fish... Two small ones and one 26" 5LBS Laker that chased the (very horizontal) jig to about 50ft before he struck as I was reeling it in (to cast out again)... After the wind died down I did manage to get another one on the line, but we went to net him he took off and spit the hook right out. (that's what I get for switching off of Alec's Jigs and using crappy ones). I feel better reading about how we weren't the only ones having a rough time getting bites today. - Pete

Ill third that! They are very sharp high quality hooks and hold your plastic on there great. - Pete

First of all a Big thanks again @hermit who pointed us in the right direction over by Wells College and saved us going all the way to AES for the remainder of the week... 7/19 - It took us 1 hour of putting around but eventually we found the Baitfish Pod we were looking for... We started over by wells college and followed the 100FT mark north for an hour untill we found the baitpod in-front of what looks like a large white farmhouse straight North of Wells College. As soon a we found it we dropped our Jigs and the bite was on.... we boated 5 fish total and we managed to return two of them unharmed... Two came within the first hour and the rest in the next 2 hours.... The largest one we pulled in last.... 24" 26" and 28" Fish below... The 28" weighed in at 7LBS and unfortunately we were unable to get it untangled from the net in time.... (I bought a rubber net yesterday 7/22). This is the largest fish I have ever caught 7/20 - We went back to the same spot we had found the baitpod yesterday (I marked the GPS Coordinates on my iPhone) but the bait was nowhere in sight. However we figured the fish could still be there so we dropped our lines and ended up boating 2 lakers... both under 22" and returned unharmed. 7/21 - We decided to try something different and headed over to Deans cove but the wind was real strong and the topography over there makes it hard to stay anywhere near the 100FT mark... We found some baitfish but also found it impossible to stay anywhere near them due to the wind and drift... We ended up heading back over to our sweet spot north of wells but landed no fish this day... They had moved and the wind was too strong to find them. Next job is to find a way to mount a trolling motor on the front of the boat... Thanks again to everyone who has helped me out these past few weeks. Our vacation is over now and its back to the everyday grind... Definitely looking forward to getting some Jigging in on the weekends though

It may be too late and I apologize for not seeing this post earlier... .We spent about 8 hours yesterday Jigging.... We tried Longpoint.... Wells College, North of wells College all the way up to that point.... Over by Deans Cove and North/South of it... The topography over there with how fast the drop off is from 100FT to 200 makes it hard to keep a boat on the 100FT line with the wind... We Ended up coming back with two bites and no boated fish... Wind and the drift was bad yesterday... Didn't seem to matter where we went, we had a hard time finding any baitfish around the 100FT mark. We did not try south of longpoint by the plant but I wish you better luck then we had Ill post another 3 day Jigging report like I did before.... Wednesday was a great day for Jigging thx to @Hermit and his recommendation on where we could go up here.