Reports 7/25 to 7/27
Fishing remains good to excellent in the region. Here’s the breakdown over the past few days:
7/25 Seneca Lake out of Geneva: Guided Kevin and Drew for the full day starting at 6 am. Laker fishing was decent though a step or two slower than last week’s tremendous action. The guys did well though, landing 8 solid fish including a couple in the 28″ to 29″ class. Nearly all were wild. Depths were all over the map with the first fish coming from around 55′ FOW then subsequent fish hitting in over 115′ FOW. Seneca’s water temps are the most volatile in the FLs and heavy or even just steady winds can move the thermocline quickly. Add in a few cold springs and laker location can be a head-scratcher. The Great Lakes are similar! BTW – Action was very slow after around 11 am. Moving deep helped, but if you aren’t getting on the water first thing in the AM, more often than not you’re basically missing out on the best action.
7/26 AM Cayuga Lake out of Myers Point: Met Kevin and Drew around 6:30 am after they were running a little late. Action on Cayuga was every bit as good as Seneca Lake with a couple solid browns landed and a half dozen nice lakers. One brown had a couple lampreys attached, including a very large one. All fish were released today. The brown condition looks tremendous!
PM: Around 11:15 am I picked up Glenn and Glen at Taughannock. Glen’s a longtime troller and grew up around my hometown of Penfield (he’s from East Rochester) and we have a lot of shared memories of Irondequoit Creek as well as the assorted characters (including various goofballs) that inhabited the Linear Park region in the late 1970s and 80s. I met Glen at Geneva and he wanted to get better at the jigging, which he’d had some success with in the past.
The bite near the Power Plant started out very promising with a lot of fish chasing. By the time the guys got the technique dialed in – which didn’t take long, the fish had slowed a lot. So we caught the end of it. But we had a slow steady pick with 4 nice lakers landed and a few hits missed right up until we left. We worked both shores and the fish seem to be fairly well distributed, though concentrations get better the further north you go. Things will likely change daily and I expect mid and lower lake areas to see good numbers of lakers and other salmonids moving in shortly.
7/27 AM: I was kind of dreading guiding Skaneateles Lake this AM with the wooden “classic” boat show going on and the typical mid-summer scene at the launch, but my fears were unfounded. Some heavy T-Storms moved through the region around 5 to 6:30 am and when I arrived at the parking lot of the State Launch only one other boat had gone out. Eric, Dave and Henry did alright given the overcast and at times windless and at other times very windy conditions. Eric doesn’t fish much at all and managed some nice bass to over 17″ and some rockies as well. Dave wound up being the rockbass king and Henry caught a mix of rockies and smallmouths. Tubes and dropshot rigs produced best today. Water temp was 73 on top.