Reports 10/7, 10/8 and 10/9
The nice weather clearly prompted some calls for fishing outings. I had a cancellation for Saturday early in the week and it filled up quickly! The next 8 days are booked (I don’t guide Tuesdays and Thursdays through October due to classes.) But many dates are available the last two weeks in October. Fishing has been good and here’s how things went:
10/7 AM Seneca out of Watkins: Guided the Hermans for the AM targeting pike. We got a later start than I was hoping for. The pike bite was tentative for us. Some fish were hitting but we weren’t able to hook them. Some jigging produced a few light hits from mostly small salmon. Tough AM, but I wouldn’t have done anything different had we done it over. The fish were around but neutral to negative.
10/7 PM Watkins: I picked up Perry at the dock around 12:30 and we fished till nearly dark. Perry casts minnows on bobbers and I was happy that he was able to find some good bait at Seneca Marine. I anchored us up and within 5 minutes he had a hit. After moving a few times we found a good area and Perry wound up landing 4 nice pike – 2 @ 31″, 1 @ 32″ and a 25″er. He learned pike fishing back in the late 1960s/early 1970s with Seneca Lake guide Bob Cass. He used slip bobbers and we worked water from around 12′ to 15′ deep. Perry had some great stories re: this legendary pike fishery back then! We had fun and I enjoyed watching the bobbers swoop down. It was the first time out of maybe 1/2 dozen trips that Perry finally did well with me. But it was also the first time he was able to procure some great bait. Fun day.
10/8 AM Keuka Lake: Guided Ed for the AM. We were going to try fly-fishing Tigers on Otisco, but Ed’s shoulder wasn’t feeling great. The AM laker bite on Keuka was OK. Ed landed 2 nice ones and had some other hits. We stayed near the State Park. Lots of bait and fish were around. South winds had some bite to them – they were around 10 mph on the lake, 4 mph on the hills!
10/8 PM Keuka Lake: Guided Todd and his sons Connery and Jacob. Jake had the hot hand landing a few lakers in short order. Other hits were missed. A run to the Bluff produced a few more, then we got another back near the park for a total of around 8 fish landed. Halfway decent, but certainly not great fishing. The weather pattern was to blame. Perch fishing on Seneca was also slow from what I heard. Fish came from 85′ to 105′. Plenty of fish are around the State Park.
10/9 Cayuga Lake out of Long Point: Guided Jim, Charles and Chuck today for laker jigging. Charlie bought a place near the Silos a year or two ago and wanted to learn the pattern. It was a fun day of joking around and some great stories. Jim spends his summers guiding in Montana for trout with his wife. Fishing started out tough near Sheldrake with one or two fish landed. As the wind died down the fishing heated up with very good action throughout the mid- AM and PM. The guys landed 13 or 14 nice lakers (nothing over 25″) and one rainbow around 14″. Trollers caught salmon (some legals,) lakers and rainbows. Fishing is great on Cayuga Lake! Water temps were around 62.