Cyanobacterial bloom is a common problem faced by eutrophic lakes. Remote sensing technology offers the possibility of monitoring blooms in large scale within a short time.First of all, it is necessary to determine the monitoring ability of different satellites when selecting remote sensing data. Taking Erhai Lake for example,the paper analyzed the temporal and spatial monitoring ability of HJ-1B and Landsat satellite in small inland lakes, and evaluated their applicability and advantages of monitoring. The results show that both can effectively identify and extract the detail information of bloom distribution,and are more suited for the bloom monitoring of small and medium-sized lakes than that by MODIS. Further analysis reveals that combining both data of cyanobacterial bloom moniting can obtain more objective time characteristics and describe the development law of spatial distribution of bloom. The result can offer reference for bloom monitoring by means of remote sensing in other small and medium-sized lakes.