The Cayuga Fisher

Jigging for Lake Trout:  Behavior:  General Locations

Jigging Index  |  Behavior Index  =>  Seasonal Variations

General Locations :

In Cayuga and the Finger Lakes, lake trout are found below the thermocline in summer and scattered throughout the lake in winter.  They will suspend in open water but spend most of their time on or near the bottom of the lake.  This makes looking for them a lot easier!  It's not necessary to search the whole water column for fish- just the bottom of the lake!  To make it a little easier, lake trout love water that is 49-52 degrees and are often found in great numbers where this water and lake bottom meet.  Find the thermocline, where it meets lake bottom, and structure, and you'll have located lake trout.  It's a little tougher in the colder months with no thermocline in place, but similar principles apply and lakers are jiggable year round.

Guiding Principles to Locating Lake Trout:

• Find bait schools
• Find the thermocline, if it's in place
• Find underwater lake structure
• Find currents within the lake

If you can locate baitfish in the right water temps you'll have almost certainly found some lake trout.  Whether or not they are active is another matter and you'll have to test this by jigging.  If you find fish but they aren't biting:  MOVE!  It can be hard to leave fish but if they aren't active it's probably a good idea to relocate, even a few hundred yards can be enough sometimes.  Who knows, maybe the lakers just finished a feeding binge, whatever, if the fish you are on aren't hitting, it's wise to find another pod.

Finding the thermocline can be a little tougher without expensive electronics.  In general, in the Finger Lakes region, lakes will set up a thermocline between 30-50 feet in early summer.  By fall it will have deepened to around 80-100 feet and the lake trout follow. Seasonal variations in weather dictate individual features of each year's thermocline.  A fast hot spring results in a shallow thermocline- the water warms quickly and forms a pancake on top of the colder deep water.  A cool long spring means a deeper, wider thermocline (and possibly tougher fishing).  Daily local variations are due to the wind, as the breeze pushes the warm surface water up and down the lake.  Big variations occur with individual lake size and structure as well.  In general, the wind mixes the water of the smaller lakes less and they develop shallower thermoclines.  Midsummer in Cayuga it may be at 90 feet, on Keuka, 50 feet.

Underwater structure is best found with a combination of good maps and spending time slowly cruising the water with your fishfinder.  Look for drops, flats, points, holes, cutouts, and deeper flats.  All structure is important and will hold fish at some time of the year.  Early spring, shallow flats are good.  Midsummer, drops and points.  Winter, deep flats.  When searching for lakers, check different kinds of structure at the same depths. If they aren't at 90 foot flats, maybe they're at 90 foot points.  

Currents, too, are best found through old-fashioned time on the water, though these can be somewhat inferred by paying attention to the wind before you go out.  Knowing what the wind has been doing for the past few days will help you find currents, eddies, the thermocline, and larger numbers of lake trout.  For example, a South wind will stack warm summer water on the South side of a point, pushing the fish deeper in that location and possibly moving them out entirely.  The effects of wind and climate on the lakes is covered in detail in the "Water" section. (Not up yet!  Link to be added when it is.)

Jigging Index  |  Behavior Index  |  Top  =>  Seasonal Variations