Seneca Lake out of Geneva 10/16 PM
Guided Dave for a 1/2 day trip targeting northern pike starting just after 1 pm. I was hoping to get out here during the past week to scout things out. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty crappy and the lake temps were warmer than what I like for pike, so I did not make it down. We had decent water temps today with 61 degrees. Skies were cloudy to overcast with a nice NW wind blowing (as usual) more than the forecasted 5 to 10 mph. We are also at the full-moon, which probably isn’t a good thing for pike fishing in clear lakes.
The biggest problem I had today (and also last year around this time frame) was the lack of vegetation, mainly on the northern 1/2 of the lake. This lake is locally famous for being choked with milfoil. You can’t find it now! I’m not sure if the algae blooms are killing it off (with the lack of light penetration) or what. I took Dave to a bunch of typically solid areas and we just couldn’t find habitat. I wasn’t able to do a whole lot of searching on the east shore due to the wind, but I did check some areas out and there was nothing. I had to run Dave literally halfway down the lake, which isn’t something I want to do on Seneca Lake – especially with NW winds, but that’s what I did. We did finally find a good looking area, but had zero luck raising any northerns. He gave things a very good effort, but if there were pike around, they weren’t chasing or hitting.
The lack of weeds poses some serious problems for the future of the pike fishing in this lake – at least for now. Weeds provide nursery areas and habitat for young pike. Pike (and perch) also spawn on weedbeds. The limited amount of weeds will limit the pike production on this lake. I like to look at Seneca as two or even three lakes: you have the northern portion going down to Long Point, the middle section from Long Point down to Valois/Glenora and then the southern section from Valois/Peach Orchard/Glenora south. Last year the southern third probably had the best weeds going into the winter. We’ll see what we wind up with this season. Unfortunately we only had that one good looking area today and weren’t able to raise any fish in it. The ride back was rough but not too bad, but it still was enough to stop us from hitting mid-lake east shore areas as we headed back to Geneva.