Cayuga/Seneca Lakes 2/16 – 2/18
2/16 Cayuga out of Taughannock: I had to teach classes at Cornell at 3:15 pm which meant I had to be off the water at Seneca by 2 pm and Cayuga by around 2:15 in order to make it on time. The plan was for my buddy Mike to bring his new Lund up past Ithaca around 8:30 am and check on the wind conditions and then make the call on what lake to fish. Unfortunately, he called early in the AM and had no working trailer lights. After deciding to postpone our boat fishing by a day, he found a place that fixed the problem and we met at Cayuga around 12:30. Then he couldn’t get his engine started. After 1/2 hour of trying to figure out the problem, we finally did and got out.
A couple boats were pulling out as we launched. One small boat trolling with 2 rods did great with a limit of nice salmon (he reportedly released a 5 to 6lber after limiting out.) A larger boat didn’t do well (we’re not sure what that means – as fly-fishers we’re happy with a couple legal fish or sometimes just one, but a few trollers seem to feel anything less than 20 to 35 fish is a “slow day.”)
We set up near the park and fished until I had to go. We had a few hits but no solid fish. After Mike dropped me off he worked a few of our favorite streches and found some fish. He wound up landing a 19″, 20″ and around 5 sublegals. He let them all go. He did see a fair number of hook scars on the fish. All in all a good experience on Cayuga.
2/17 Seneca out of Watkins Glen: After Mike’s good afternoon fishing on Cayuga it was tempting to go back there, but I had a guide trip scheduled there on Friday and Seneca generally produces chances at better salmon and fishes better on lighter winds, so that was the plan.
Why does Seneca Lake produce big salmon and appear to be producing more than Cayuga Lake, despite both lakes great baitfish populations, Cayuga’s better lamprey control and Seneca’s bad lamprey problems?
I was just asked that question and have been thinking about it. It wasn’t always like this. Seneca’s bait levels were low in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Salmon fishing was very good, but typical derby winning salmon weren’t anything special – around 5 to 6lbs. In 2010 they were pushing 8lbs.
Seneca’s salmon often get a better headstart since there are loads of freshwater shrimp there for them to feed on in addition to the alewives, but that doesn’t explain the big fish. Fishing pressure, until the last 2 years was lighter on Seneca for salmon than Cayuga, but still, that doesn’t quite explain things either.
The best theory I can come up with is that the brown trout stockings on Seneca Lake are failures. About 40,000 fingerlings and 18,000 yearlings are stocked a year on Seneca. My guess is that nearly all the fingerlings wind up as lake trout food. The browns have not thrived there at all in the 2000s. Most that are caught are around 15″ to 16″ long. Once in a while a nicer one.
Why do they fail? Lampreys, lake trout/pike predation, water temps – who knows? Maybe all of the above. But for all intents and purposes, Seneca Lake basically has two salmonids that really thrive there – salmon and lake trout. Rainbows are nebulous there – we rarely catch them and the runs are a lot less than they ever were, though some of the best trollers like Sean Brown are able to target them with some success. The few browns that survive can get big and appear healthy, and that’s also the case on Canandaigua and Keuka Lakes. The FEW that survive do OK. If I were DEC I’d start fin-clipping yearling browns (maybe they are already) and see if the fingerlings survive at all. Maybe just stop the brown trout stocking all together and just stock salmon. They seem to do better.
Cayuga’s browns do much better. AND we have great landlocked salmon fishing. One pie may feed 4 people just fine, but add a few more mouths and portions get scant. That sums things up. You can’t have it all, so if you want big browns Cayuga Lake is probably your best bet.
Back to the report:
So we got an early start – or so we thought and were at the launch at around 8 am or so. I could see boats trolling around the Salt Plant as we drove down Rt. 414. My jaw pretty much dropped when we arrived at the launch and saw the parking lot. I’d never seen that many rigs parked in there EVER during the winter – even on weekends. And this was a weekday in February! Now it’s not as if there were 20 rigs there – more like 10 to 12, but again – for a weekday in February, that’s a lot.
I’m a big picture fisherman. To me I want to grow the sport and get kids away from X-box. The more license revenue the better for the sport – we get more fisheries work done, hatcheries, conservation etc…. But there’s also a selfish part of me that, like many anglers likes having the lake to himself! But what a surprise. It was the best day of the week (on paper) and it’s been a harsh winter, so time will tell if this is going to be the norm or not for winter fishing on Seneca. I think it was a bunch of events conspiring together. Around a third of the boats were perch fishermen.
All in all we had good fishing but not so great on the catching. Within 20 minutes of fishing I had a nice hit or two. We had some follows as well with nice fish on our flies. Pretty steady “action” throughout the morning, but fish weren’t committing very well. They seemed skittish, and we just plain missed some. We weren’t able to fish quite where we wanted and there’s no doubt in my mind that the boat traffic hurt the fishing. There were at least 5 to 7 guys casting from shore along Salt Road, so we stayed out of their way. The trollers were courteous for the most part.
The Salt Plant area was swarming with trollers – you’d have thought it was a commercial fishing fleet working a school of tuna or salmon in Alaska. Not once was there a moment w/o any boats there. The “crowd” forced us to work some other areas and we found a small pod of fish up the lake a few miles. I dropped a decent fish and had follows.
The fleet thinned out later in the day. We’d tried a few other shorelines without action and by late afternoon the winds died down and the fishing did too. We had one last flurry of action – small fish and I landed one. No great shakes. We checked pike for around an hour, but even if they were around where we fished, the conditions weren’t great.
The spring warming trends will disperse these fish and the crowds a bit and that will make for more comfortable fishing conditions. New York State is currently changing the strain of salmon being stocked, in hopes that the new strain won’t group up as much. That will hopefully help too. Eye-opening day on Seneca, that’s for sure.
Cayuga Lake out of Taughannock 2/18:
After Thursday’s fiasco on Seneca I called my clients and said I’d be at Taughannock around 6:45 am. The weather forecast was all over the map, with nice southerlies forecast and then a wind advisory. At least the advisory was for west winds,which wouldn’t typically be dangerous on Cayuga Lake. The wind advisories were for 2 or 4 pm depending on when you listened to the forecast.
I’ve been hoping to do some winter guiding for years but have yet to do a January or February trip, so I was pretty psyched about it.
Many fishermen don’t realize:
1.) How good (to great) the fishing can be for pike and salmon.
2.) How comfortable it can be out there.
3.) And lastly, how beautiful and tranquil it can be.
I had plenty of pike gear and salmon gear and was ready for whatever the best opportunities were. Todd and Steve showed up on time and we got out to find fairly calm, overcast conditions.
We ran down the lake and I had the guys work some pike set ups. Todd had a nice pickerel follow his jerkbait within a couple casts. Steve also had a follow from a pike. Winter piking on Cayuga is rarely a numbers game, it’s about size and you usually only get a few opportunities. Focusing on your presentation and being ready to set the hook are paramount. Steve got railed on a swimbait. His rod doubled over and I saw a nice pike flashing near the bottom. After some good surges I netted the fish. I thought it was around 30″ when he hooked it, but it wound up being a heavily proportioned 35″ fish. Maybe 12lbs. We snapped a couple quick shots and let her go.
A couple more hits were had and Steve wound up landing a fat pickerel, which we kept. We tried other areas but the wind died and the fish were skittish. We had a couple half-hearted follows then headed north.
It was tempting to run to AES to jig lakers, but with the impending wind storm we stayed near Taughannock. It was a good call, because the salmon action was a lot of fun. The weather was really weird. It changed by the minute – winds from the south, east, north and west (basically swirling.) We had sun and clouds, wind and no wind. A stickbait and hometied white jig worked best. Todd landed a lot of salmon – mostly 13″ to 14″ fish. We saw bigger ones below the small ones. Steve hooked and landed a 20″ beauty. Later he got a 19″er and a 17 1/2″er (obviously released.) We fished a lot of shoreline over water from 20′ upwards to 70′ deep and more. The numbers of 10″ to 14″ salmon out on Cayuga are very impressive and bode well for great future salmon fishing! It’s really going to be a heck of a ride over the next year or two on both Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. The wind after noon set up perfectly with a steady northerly around 10 mph. That with some sun are terrific salmon fishing conditions. “When in doubt, go out.” I’m glad we did.
I saw a couple little dead lampreys at the launch, and we had one salmon come up with a small lamprey as well. But overall, despite the presence of some 4″ lampreys, the fish in Cayuga are incredibly clean and in very good condition.
Kudos to the park personnel – they had a backhoe and did the best they could to dredge out the area around the little bridge at Taughannock. It’s still very shallow there, but at least they tried. Hopefully they can get it all taken care of. Water levels are low but were on the rise. Water temps ranged from 36 to 39 degrees. Coldest water was on the south end, east shore.