Seneca Lake out of Geneva 6/25
Went out of Seneca Lake State Park with my buddy Terry today. We met at the launch at 6:30 am, after a barrage of heavy rain storms came through. Heavy downpours throughout the night left creek mouth areas with large swaths of muddy water. With all the rain we’ve had lately, the ground is saturated and rainwater runs right into the lake.
Water temps are all over the place. We had 66 degree water up north and as we motored south the temps declined gradually. At Dresden we had 59 degrees. Weed beds are high in some places and very low in others. We brought tackle for pike and lake trout. I haven’t had any time to pike fish this spring apart from a couple casts when clients have been taking lunch breaks. Our AM pike conditions weren’t great but weren’t bad. I managed two northerns running 24″ to 25″. I also had a 14″ largemouth hammer my spoon. This was in our first area. Another two places we tried didn’t produce. You can catch pike all summer on this lake but it takes patience. My guiding tends to focus on hot bites and I try to get people into top-notch fishing when I can. I don’t see myself doing any pike guiding here until temps cool down again in late September, though I can see doing occasional pike forays when targeting lakers.
Laker conditions were good today. How was the laker fishing? My fingers haven’t typed the words “Seneca Lake” and “excellent” for lake trout in the same paragraph in a long time! But I’d rate the fishing today for lakers as good to excellent. It’s the best I’ve seen it on Seneca in at least 5 years. We landed 5 or 6 fish today and Terry lost a beast. 80% were hatchery fish. We had active fish and good numbers of marks all day long. Had we not targeted pike, I think we would’ve had a double digit lake trout day. We had fish up north in Geneva south to Dresden/Sampson. They were very aggressive despite good numbers of bait being around.
So when guiding lakers here, I’d have no trouble doing a little pike targeting. But the good news is the laker action. Fish looked healthy and we had good numbers of them on the screen throughout the lake. Nobody was out fishing! It’s probably not quite as good as Cayuga but it is still darn good.