Seneca Lake out of Geneva 5/7
With the Memorial Day Weekend lake trout derby only around 2 1/2 weeks away, I can say that I think this derby – weather permitting, has the potential to feature some of the best laker action seen there in a long time. Time will tell, but I think we’re finally going to see a very hot bite during the derby.
Guided Tony again for a full day. I brought pike gear, salmon tackle and of course, laker jigging gear. Pike fishing was slow. We saw a pike or two late in the day, but never raised any early. I’m not sure, but the recent upswing in pike fishing on this lake may primarily be in the lake’s south end, where it is very good for the most part. I don’t care much for sunny, bluebird days for early season pike fishing (or any pike fishing for that matter,) so we’ll see how things go, but we didn’t see much of anything in the couple areas we tried, and they are usually good early season areas.
A few salmon are around the lake’s north end and we saw a couple small ones surface, but no follows. The laker jigging is very, very good right now and has the potential to be superb on any given day. Tony did great working deep water (over 140′.) He landed 8 fish up to over 30″ and likely 10lbs. We released the big one and I kept the average ones for the smoker and grill. Anyone that tells you fresh lakers aren’t good eating: 1.) Doesn’t know how to take care of the catch after the catch. 2.) Doesn’t know how to cook fish. 3.) Doesn’t like fish. They are excellent table fare. But they don’t freeze or keep well for long.
The big news was the alewives aka sawbellies aka “mooneyes” moving in. They are everywhere and lakers are right on them. A cast with an alewife tube in 15′ of water yielded a follow from a beauty in calm conditions with sun, midday! Tony had fish in 40′ FOW and we had them chasing jigs in over 180′. Surface temps hit the upper 50s, though it’s certainly much colder underneath. A few smallmouths are moving up. Panfish are moving shallow along with carp.