Billy V Cayuga report July 1, 2012

[Billy V]

Today we left the dock at 5:30am and headed up to AES and set up in 50 FOW. We had 60 degrees on bottom in there so we decided to slide out a little deeper to look for some colder water. Once we hit 90 FOW the screen lit up and the rods started poppin' pretty regularly - at one point we had 6 bites in less than 15 minutes - it was just that kind of morning. There was a decent temp break at about 60' and we had a lot of bait and hooks on the screen from there down to the bottom. Our hot spoon early on was the NK Seasick Waddler fished 70' down on our Cannon DT10's, followed closely by a DW Super Slim Green Alewife parked at 60' and a DW Super Slim Green Gator at 80'. Spoons were definitely our top producers today, but we did manage a few fish off of our divers out 210' and 180' on #2 settings. They were pulling a Green Pro-Chip/Sigg's Rigs Green Hypnotist and a Mountain Dew Spinny/Ghost Pulse fly respectively. We had a lot of fun with the lake trout for the first few hours of the morning in that 90-120 FOW range but when that bite began to slow we added some free sliders to our riggers and we managed to hook several nice LL's (Thanks for the tip Mower!). Best speeds for us today were 2.4-2.6mph. We only fished the stretch from AES up to Don's Marina. Most of our fish were in the 3-5lb class today but we lost a real big brown at the back of the boat.

One thing I wanted to mention here is how the high gear ratio of our Daiwa Saltist reels saved the day for us (except for that brown!). Most of the guys in our crew today had a tough time with our light action rods and the way that we asked them to reel in the fish. You know the drill - slow steady pull up, reel down, keep tension on the fish. We saw several different "techniques" for fighting fish today and most of them just didn't work. The high gear ratio of the Saltist's allowed us to keep way more tension on the fish than we would have have had if we were using a slower reel and as a result we landed a few fish that I'm positive we would've lost otherwise. They're not cheap but in my book they're worth every penny and have more than paid for themselves in the 3 years that we've been using them.

We have another trip later this week and I'll be sure to post a report then too.

[EarlyRiser]

Thanks for sharing.

[stoutner]

Nicely done Bill. Keep up the good reports.

[BrookTrout]

Very nice report, sounds like a great morning!

[fish-on]

Thanks for the report,