Billy V Cayuga report July 5, 2012

[Billy V]

Today we left the dock a little later than normal and headed up towards Milliken. We heard the great reports from up that way from the 4th and based on how well we did there last Sunday we decided to give it another shot. We set up in 100 FOW and before we could get the second rod in the water the first one fires and we land a decent laker. At this point I'm thinking "game on!". We got our basic 6 rod spread set up and quickly landed another laker but then the weeds took over and made trolling very difficult. We fought through the weeds for a little bit but decided that we had to get out of there because we just couldn't keep our gear in the water. On top of the weeds, the fleas were terrible, so it was a double whammy of nastiness. We pointed the boat west and trolled to the other side of the lake in the hopes that it was weed free - it was - and found a pocket of small atlantics and lakers in 150 FOW. We looped around on that a couple of times and picked a few more fish and cleaned a ton of fleas off the lines. Then the wind shifted and blew all the weeds from the east side over to the west side and we began fouling lines again. So we pulled gear and headed back to the east side and found clearer water and had a great last hour of our trip, taking several more fish. It was a tough day of cleaning weeds and fleas off the rods but by the end of the day we had put together a decent box of fish.

We had our divers going with a Green E-Chip/Sigg's Rigs Green Hypnotist out 270' and a Wonderbread Spinny/Sigg's Rigs UV Wonderbread out 300', both on #2 settings. We also took a couple of fish on a 600 copper pulling a Chrome Spinny/Sigg's Rigs Green Dolphin combo. Riggers weren't quite as good as they have been for us, but we still managed fish from a DW Superslim Midnight Special fished 90' down and from a DW Superslim Green Gator fished 80' down. Today was the first day that 30lb Big Game didn't keep the fleas off. Looks like it's time to spool up some 50lb. There was a ton of current today - far more than I've seen on Cayuga Lake in a long time. At one point on a long troll south I looked back at our spread and all of the rods were way off to the starboard side. It was so bad that we actually tangled downrigger cables a couple of times. That hasn't happened to us in probably 3 or 4 years now.

We'll be back out again this weekend, see you out at the LOU ALL weigh in!

[Skippers Trophy 01]

Kids look happy, a couple more future trollers!

I am setting up a couple 50 lb DR rods tonight... I assume the wires were nasty?

[apb]

Thanks for the report...we were also on Cayuga that day and experienced the weed and flea plague. Do you run your 50lb big game line all the way to the spoon or spinny or do you still use a small length of 14lb or so leader for stealth? Thanks, Andy

[ERABBIT]

[Billy V]

You'll definitely want to leader that 50# down to something smaller. Yes, the wires were nasty with fleas too.

[EarlyRiser]

Aha! We experienced that same current last night near AES. The rigger lines crossed and I couldn't figure out why...

The weeds were AWFUL last night on both sides and in the middle.

[Billy V]

That current was bad enough that it wrapped two of our rigger cables and twice unhooked the snap to the rigger weight!