A Midsummer Night's Eve: Cayuga Cat!

My friend and colleague Jeremy Dietrich recently asked me to take his younger brother Wade and his friend and fellow graduate student Laura out on a fishing trip on the north end of Cayuga Lake. So, the crew met me at 5 pm Sunday evening for a 4 hour excursion on the "Rough Draft."

We tried a bit of trolling, but the recreational boating of the weekend had chopped up so much vegetation that it was nearly impossible. We switched to drifting and casting. Before long, Wade had boated a perch and a nice chain pickerel. Within an hour, Laura had boated a nice pickerel also, and a smaller "hammer handle."

We were drifting the navigation channel, out in front of the state park and working our way south towards Canoga Creek. Wade hooked a nicer perch, a keeper. I boated a couple of pickerel. And then, Laura hooked into a bruiser.


We watched her fight this fish. Both Jeremy and I quickly ascertained that we were clearly out of the 3-4 lb pickerel class. The tension rose, instructions were helpfully peppered at Laura...drag settings, reeling instructions, etc. Then we saw a flash of the huge fish as it bulled under the boat. She fought for long minutes more until it began to tire. Slowly she horsed it to the side of my boat. Jeremy was leaning over the edge, ready to help land it...he looked over his shoulder with a surprised look and exclaimed "Its a huge catfish!" He reached for it and it dove again. Now we were all quite engaged and invested in boating this strange and unusual Cayuga Lake trophy. After a few valiant misses, Jeremy finally managed to gill it, and hoisted above decks. It was a leviathan.

Congrats Laura and Wade! Come back fishin' any time.




































After picture taking and all of the fun, we fished a bit more in the channel, and then headed for the mouth of Canoga Creek for a large mouth Bass or two. But the group was pretty satiated with having caught the Channel Cat, (According to Wikipedia, realistically, a channel catfish over 20 pounds (9 kg) is a spectacular specimen, and most catfish anglers view a 10 pound (4.5 kg) fish as a very admirable catch. Furthermore the average size channel catfish an angler could expect to find in most waterways would be between 2 and 4 pounds) and our bass fishing resulted in just on beefy Rock bass, along with enjoying a good summer's eve sunset over Canoga Creek Farm and Conservancy. Stats? 5 pickerel, 2 perch, 1 rock bass, and one 30 inch, 12 pound Channel Catfish.