Tough Fishing on Cayuga 7/21 and 7/23

[EarlyRiser]

I don't know if others are also experiencing it or not, but my productivity on Cayuga has been steadily declining over the last few weeks.

7/21: Saturday we started at 6am and trolled East side, West side, and down the middle between Myers and AES with fairly steady action, but not a whole lot to show for it when we wrapped-up around 3pm. We went 10/14 with 4 lakers 16-24" and a whole bunch of dink salmon 6-16". We tried riggers, divers, spoons, spinners, etc.. in colors from silver/blue to white/green to blue/green to purple and covered everything from 35' down to about 70'. We fished from 80' fow out to 380 fow and varied our speeds from 2.2 mph up to about 2.8 mph. In the end, we had the most action on our 10 color and our 8 color in the middle of the lake traveling between 2.5 and 2.8 mph, but it was definitely nothing like the size and quality of fish we had been doing back in June. The action was better than nothing, but I don't know what the deal was with all the small fish. The 24" laker was the only fish over 19".

7/23 Evening: Headed out for a few hours after work on Monday. We trolled from Myers diagonally toward Tgk and then back and forth a bit near Tgk and then back to Myers. Fished from 6pm until about 9:30pm and went 1/1 with a tiny rainbow on the 8 color leadcore and a white/green/silver spoon. It was a nice evening to be on the water, but the fishing was absolutely pathetic. There was bait up high (20-30') out over deep water, but we did not seem to find fish under it. There were some deep marks (65-90') near Tgk, but they would not go for our setup. We tried green dot/green fly spinnies, purple spoons deep, bright colors on the leadcore, glow spoons when the light faded, lots of different speeds, but to no avail. The wind had broken up all the weed mats from the weekend, so while there did not seem to be a lot of weeds, every time we checked a line it had at least a few weeds on it. I'm sure that didn't help our cause.

Good news is that there were very few fleas on either trip.

This is about the time that the fishing got really tough for me last year. Does it just get tough for everyone on Cayuga at this time, or have the fish just been negative recently with all the hot weather/high pressure, or is there a different approach that I should be shifting to at this time of year?

Thoughts? Ideas? Advice?

[final flight]

sat. morning was a tough bite for the blue bubble but got things fired up from noon till 7ish. the hot set up for me was a silver doodger parked at 70 ft. (this only took a couple of fish) the other rigger was parked at 77ft. with a stacker rod 15ft. above it. silver fish were caught out deep (on the turns) and lakers were on or near the bottom in 80-90 fow. lost count on totals but was over 20 fish. silvers were 2-3 lb. lakers were in the 5-7 lb.range. did break two fish off untill i removed the 8 lb. floro leader. black/blue , green/black and silver with green glow tape. all 3 inch california plastic. down speed 1.4-1.8 down temp. 53 deg. north troll was better than south troll picked up and ran several times to stay with a north troll.

[Splitshot115]

[EarlyRiser]

Nice work. I guess that type of pattern takes some time to figure out...

[58Johnson]

EarlyRiser you have a PM