Seneca Lake out of Sampson 8/28
Guided Fred and Sari on Seneca Lake today. They’d done a lot of driving over the past couple days and weren’t up to heading all the way to Taughannock from Geneva, so we went out of Sampson.
Things started out strange; the weather forecast was for light north winds and sunny highs in the low 80s, though we were met with south winds, fog and rain! These low light conditions didn’t help us any, but Fred and Sari managed to hook several lakers in the morning, landing one small fish around 16″. There’s a fair amount of bait and decent numbers of lakers in the Sampson area in 70′ to 90′ of water. We shot across the lake for some bass fishing after a couple hours and had some very good action on small bass – both largemouths and smallies. The fish fought well despite their size! Superflukes, Senkos and tube jigs all worked well. Near the outflow of Dresden I spotted several freshwater drum. Those were the first I’d ever positively identified on Seneca Lake, though I do know of some locals who have seen one or two in the past.
We worked other areas for bass and lakers and they picked up a couple more small lake trout. The weather never did clear up. Overall I think the fishing is good in Seneca, it was just a dark day. There were plenty of lake trout around, just not very aggressive ones. The milfoil is dying back in many areas and the smallmouth fishing (with bonus pike) should be good.