Seneca Lake out of Sampson State Park 10/19, 20
Guided two full days in a row here with long time clients. Pike fishing is good to downright excellent. Some pike are in good condition whereas others are skinny. The thin fish look healthy otherwise (no weird slime or sores – just thin.) Alewives are starting to move in and this along with rapidly cooling water temperatures will get the pike active and feeding. Their condition should improve quickly.
10/19: Guided Gordon for the full day starting around 10 am. It was rough out there with strong south winds and plenty of waves and whitecaps. Not good for the fly-fishing Gordon wanted to do but he gave it a good shot. Gear fishing resulted in 9 pike ranging from around 22″ to 29″. Fun day but windy.
10/20: Guided Tony and Pete starting at 8:30 am. I had an idea of what was going on here after the full day with Gordon. We worked a bunch of areas from the north end of the lake down to below Sampson. Most areas produced. The guys had some great fishing with around 4 doubles hooked. 24 nice pike to 29″ and one solid pickerel at 22″ were landed – all on spoons (the pattern I use originated with Tony!) The weather wasn’t nearly as bad as forecast. It was raining when we arrive at 8 am and it started raining again as we were leaving the parking lot, but no rain while we were fishing. Fish are well distributed. Let’s hope this fishery keeps going. We tried around 20 minutes to 1/2 hour of laker jigging and I spent some time searching with electronics. I did not mark many fish although I did mark a few. No luck there.