Seneca Lake 10/30 + Owasco Lake 10/31
I like this weather pattern and the fish are hitting! November might be my favorite month to fish the Finger Lakes: the fishing is good to excellent, the leaves are still intact and beautiful and next to nobody is out on the lakes! The cottages are closed up, the jet skis, sailboats, pleasure boaters, paddle boarders et. al. are all long gone. It’s fishing time, pure and simple.
Seneca Lake 10/30: Guided Mark I. out of Watkins. I was a little hesistant regarding the weather forecast with moderate north winds but we decided to go for it. We can always call it a day after a 1/2 if the conditions aren’t very fishable. Mark prefers to catch fish on the fly-rod but will resort to gear for an occasional break or if the conditions dictate it (too much wind or some arm fatigue.) The winds were a bit harsh to start but moderated later in the day. Oftentimes we were able to get out of the wind.
We had some good action on both the flies and lures. Mark wound up landing 3 solid pike on streamers – a 25″er and a couple around 31″. He also dropped a solid. On stickbaits he landed 2 solids. Unfortunately I am seeing some signs of disease on the fish – the bloody, worn fins and excess slime. The fish were a little on the thin side, but not emaciated. Thus is life with pike in Seneca Lake. I also see this condition on Owasco and in Cayuga on occasion, so it may just be a common pike disease or sign of stress. I’ll keep an eye on it. Water temps are in the low 50s and even upper 40s in places. Salmon time will be upon us shortly! I can’t wait!
Owasco Lake 10/31: Guided Tom, Dom and Tom (aka Mars) today for a midday 1/2 day. As I mentioned on my last report on Owasco Lake – it was the conditions that made for a tough laker bite. Today we had good laker jigging conditions and the fishing was much better than last Sunday or Saturday the 17th. I’ve been guiding 11 years now – 10 of them full time, so I know what I’m doing with this stuff….at least I think I do!
Anyways we worked some points, shelves and even the north end flat for awhile. We had steady, good fishing with 7 or 8 solid lakers landed to 28″ and one bonus 16″ rainbow that was badly hooked on a spoon (so it was kept.) We released a couple lakers as well. All the lakers except a 22″er caught on the north end were post-spawn, thin but hungry, aggressive fish. The spoon bite was hottest for us today. We had fish hit on Hopkins and Kastmasters. They hit plastics as well, but our fish were landed on the hardware.
The real good news was that we had a few other rainbows chasing our jigs! I don’t know how Owasco Lake has been fishing for still fishermen and trollers, but I can just about guarantee that we are going to see some great rainbow trout fishing on this lake over the next few years at the very least. There are no lampreys here, loads of bait and the lake trout population is relatively low. All that should add up to some trophy browns, rainbows and lakers here in the near future!