Seneca Lake out of Watkins Glen 1/11
Started around 7:30 am with my buddy Mike – we tried perch fishing for a couple hours with no luck. Tried some areas for landlocked salmon. It didn’t take too long to have some contact with fish – we saw some and had some hits from dinks. I landed a couple. But some quality fish were showing too. I had a miss from what appeared to be a nice brown trout around 22″ give or take. Then Mike hooked a solid 19″ landlocked salmon on his Kingfish tube pattern. We had a few more short hits. Winds cranked up and Mike switched to some gear. I missed a good hit on a chartreuse streamer fished on a RIO Deep 7 line. Mike nailed a 19.5″ salmon on a jig/plastic. Water temps were around 41/42 degrees. Lake level was low, but no problems launching at Schamels.
Fishing (our style of casting and fly-fishing) remains fair on Seneca Lake for salmon/browns. Trolling success has varied according to those we talked to on the water. Most boats we saw trolling were covering a lot of water and not concentrating on any areas too much.
I expect some better fishing as winter continues, but early indications are that the classes of salmon here aren’t on a par with what we saw over the past two years. Time will tell though. It has been a warm winter and it’s quite possible that many schools of fish are in different parts of the lake. Stay tuned!