Seneca Lake out of Geneva 6/26
Guided Dan from South Carolina, who’s been booking with me since my first year. It was good to see him. I started him out with some pike casting just after 6 am. We had about 40 minutes with no action and we switched gears and went for lakers. The north end of Seneca has a LOT of water and although pike fishing can be very good at times, it’s more of a search to find them, and I didn’t feel like potentially wasting a hot laker bite.
There were a lot of lakers on the flats as shallow as 45′. A lot! That didn’t mean they were hitting great though. After maybe an hour with just light hits and chases, Dan had a flurry of good activity. Overall it wound up being a great day with 11 nice fish landed to 32″ long, though things slowed seriously by around 11 am. All but two of the fish were wild and we had one lamprey come up on a fish. Most fish were clean. The condition of some of the lake trout was amazing – these fish are feeding big-time. We kept 4 of the medium sized fish and I weighed them all (we never weigh fish that we are going to release.) IF I remember correctly, a 26″ laker was running in the 7lb range. The amount of baitfish on the north end of the lake was staggering. Seneca Lake really appears to be in excellent shape going ahead into the near future. Surface temps were 67 degrees. A thermocline has formed with laker temps down around 40′.