Reports

I had a late booking from Jack, who’d joined me a couple times last year on Seneca Lake – once for salmon and once for lakers.  He has a cottage/house on the northern third of Seneca Lake and is one of my contacts there for fishing information.  During my first 10 years or so of guiding, I would have to check out the area lakes periodically to see what was happening.  It consumed a lot of my time, energy and resources, especially on the larger lakes, where I might need to fish out of a couple different ports.  Once I got the cyclic rhythms of the fisheries down a bit, things became easier but due to year to year variations and exotic specie introductions, I still need to do a bit of scouting.  Thanks to Jack and a handful of other anglers I’ve either guided or met over the years, I don’t have to do as much reconnaissance as I used to.

We had a terrific day of lake trout action on Cayuga Lake starting at around 9:30 am.  The bite was good to excellent all morning and Jack wound up landing 18 solid lake trout as well as dropping another 1/2 dozen or so on a half day trip.  We left them biting as we concluded the trip.   Jack’s last drop of the jig had resulted in a solid fish.  His top two fish were both 30″ers.  Fish are still thin but one did spit up an alewife on the way in.  Once baitfish start moving in, these lake trout will be gorging themselves.  I expect good to downright superb fishing over the next six weeks.  After that, we usually get an influx of warm water and many of these trout will start moving shallower.  Fishing usually is still top-notch, but it won’t be the sure bet that it often can be this time of year.

The overall size of the lake trout I’ve seen come aboard has been an inch or two smaller on average than over the past 15 years in the northern basin.  It could just be the fish we’ve been encountering and the areas we’ve been fishing, but in past years I can recall plenty of days where the deep early season fish averaged 27″ to 29″ long.  This year so far they’ve been running 25″ to 27″.  We had one live lamprey come up with a fish today.  Other fish showed healed wounds but nothing to be concerned with.  Gorgeous day out on the lake!  My open dates are listed below on a report post.  Just click “reports” and scroll down to “Availability…”   I am keeping that post updated to the day.