Reports

Keuka Lake AM: Guided Bob and Bart for a 1/2 day starting at 6 am. Bob booked a laker trip with me last year and reported some good laker fishing around the Bluff area midday on Wednesday. Bob has relatives with a place on the lake and wanted to learn some bass techniques. He’s primarily been a live-bait fisherman in the past. I had the guys work the “must have” plastics for the Finger Lakes (and most clearwater bass lakes) – Senkos, Superflukes and Tube jigs. Not a great morning, but the guys had enough positive feedback from the fish to show them that these are viable techniques. Bart landed a couple 12″ to 13″ largemouths working the Senko (using his own technique.) A big rockbass or two were also caught. Bob missed a few on the Senko and fluke. He landed a largemouth as well with the Superfluke and had a big smallmouth behind/under his in one area. We wound up near the bluff area where their house was. I took some casts with a green pumpkin tube and landed into a nice 18″ smallmouth. There were likely more around too – since I hooked one, lost it then landed the fish. I was hoping to show Bob a pickerel!

After the trip ended, I took 45 minutes and worked some Branchport areas for smallies. I raised a group of nice smallies in one area with the superfluke. Then I had to go.

Seneca Lake PM: Met Todd and his son Jacob at Geneva and we headed out for lakers. I let Todd know earlier that I wasn’t terribly confident in the weather pattern but we went for it anyways. We marked quite a few lakers from 95′ to 105′. Todd lost his first three solid hookups, which was unusual -he generally lands most of his fish. I’m not sure whether the fish just weren’t grabbing the jigs well, or whether it was a coincidence. Jake had a couple momentarily hooked as well. He saw what the technique was about – and we’ll be back out Sunday so he’ll have a jump on things. Todd wound up landing a couple decent fish.

We spent a lot of time motoring around watching the electronics. We also dropped a lot of jigs in place we marked and didn’t mark fish. A lot of bait moved in towards the evening. But overall, I’d say that laker numbers are down now on the N. end. I saw the same thing happen last year. Of course, it’s still a great area to fish and an angler can still have some great fishing up there, but I think a considerable portion of trout have likely started moving down the lake. There’s nowhere near the number of fish there now that there was in early July. We worked an area downlake and marked some fish and had a hit or two. But overall it was slow fishing – not terrible, but pretty slow!

bass keuka lake Seneca Lake