Reports 6/27 – 6/29
Strong winds Monday and Tuesday forced me to reschedule/cancel trips. Water temperatures on the surface of the north end of Seneca Lake dipped to 51 degrees Wednesday. These crazy “inside temps” resulted in better fishing out deep, though we spent most of our time working shallow. Some fish and bait did find the amenable shallow temps, but most fish didn’t move up.
6/27 AM, Seneca Lake out of Geneva: Guided Chris and Dave starting around 9 am. With North winds forecast to blow into the 20s and higher, and calm winds early, an early start would have been terrific, but Chris arrived into town late and needed to get some rest, so we started just after 9 am. Fishing wasn’t easy with the wind coming up quickly and the guys having trouble detecting the bottom on a faster drift. Fish and bait were around and somewhat active at the get-go, but things slowed down once the winds started gusting. I had my 82lb thrust trolling motor on high and we lost ground! It got pretty brutal. The guys managed 3 decent lakers up to a solid 28″er, which was great given the winds. Around 75′ to 85′ fow was best.
6/28 AM, Seneca Lake Geneva: Got another late start with Chris (7:40 am) and fishing was slow for us throughout the AM. We worked a lot of different depths without much happening. A run to Sampson State Park and some areas in-between proved productive with Chris managing a couple nice lakers. The change in the wind/weather also helped. Angling Zone friend/past client Al reported good fishing in deeper water. Oftentimes when shallow water temperatures are volatile, fishing will be better in the deeper “Zone of Stability.”I’ve read about this re: Great Lakes fishing and it proved to be the case on the 28th and Al managed to capitalize on it.
6/28 PM: Met Todd, Colin and Tom at 2 pm and we headed back out. The bite was better in the PM with Colin and Tom each landing decent lakers in short order. Todd didn’t fish. Other fish were missed/dropped. It wound up being a tough bite overall. The guys don’t do a lot of fishing and did a good job given the conditions we were faced with.
6/29 Cayuga Lake out of Long Point: Met Todd, his son John and John’s girlfriend Val and the launch at 6 am. After a couple tough days on Seneca with late starts, it felt good being on the water before the sun got too high. June fishing is often an early AM, late PM affair so an early start often makes the difference. The calm conditions made it easy for John and Val to pick up the technique. They had no trouble detecting the bottom. Fishing was very good to start and actually stayed steady throughout the AM. Todd did a few drops and managed a nice 27″ brown trout. 9 lakers were landed, with all but 2 being fish over 27″!!! So some very solid lakers!
We had fun messing around with Val after a long lamprey came up with one of the lakers. She was exceptionally grossed out by the eel. Had things gone as crazy as they might have, we might have wound up with the next viral YouTube video. But alas, we didn’t toss the eel at Val and she didn’t jump overboard, so the classic clip will have to wait. But it was a scene!