Seneca/Geneva 6/19 Wow!
There’s good fishing and then there’s great fishing and then there are the days you remember vividly for the rest of your life. Kelly Rettig and his son Mike have been fishing with me over the last 3 years. They’ve experienced some terrific pike fishing and very good lake trout fishing – today was the “end all Finger Lakes lake trout day”. Today we saw why Geneva christens itself “Lake Trout Capital of the World!” The late Toby Wood used to love fishing the northern portions of Seneca Lake and it’s easy to see why after today. We got into fish right from the get-go and there were very few lulls in the action. Just fish after fish after fish! All our soft plastics worked – flukes/fin-s fish in white, white ice, golden shiner, smelt, chartreuse and 3 or 4 other colors. Berkely Gulp. Lunker City Shakers – you name it – the fish hammered it. Fish hit on the drop, the jig and the chase. 5 to 6 fish chased at a time. We caught bright fish, dark fish, wild fish and hatchery fish. Old fish and young fish. Healthy looking clean fish and scarred old fish that looked battle weary. 5 lampreys were brought aboard – and no, I didn’t eat any of them 😉 The guys landed over 70 lake trout! We took a break with some pike fishing and after landing a couple pike we went back to the lakers. I rarely fish on guide trips but I couldn’t help but join in a bit. It took no time at all to land 3 or 4 fish. It just doesn’t get any better! Fish came from 27′ to 80′ of water – most were in 35′ to 60′.
The guys have wanted a 30″+ laker for the wall and I mentioned Ray Grandner’s fantastic replica mounts – each scale hand painted by an artist in every sense of the word. A lot of taxidermists I’ve seen have a knack for making a beautiful fish look like a piece of plastic with large phony looking eyes and gaudy paint jobs. Ray’s fish look like they can swim off the wall. His rainbow trout are unreal! One look at your mount and you’ll be transported back in time to the moment you caught the fish! Check his replica mounts out at Pinewood Flies in Pine Valley NY – just north of Elmira and around 15 miles south of Watkins Glen. Freshwater or saltwater species – Ray does them all and well. There are photos of his mounts on www.flyfishingonline.com/ but there’s nothing like seeing them in person!