Seneca Lake out of Watkins Glen 12/4
Had some good fishing with my friend Jeff. He’d never caught a pike on the fly and it was on his “fishing to-do list.” We fly-fished for pike using a variety of set-ups, from floating lines with Clouser minnows to intermediate lines with double-bunny patterns. The bunny flies in white, white/gray and all black worked well and we had a good morning fly-fishing, landing 4 decent fish on the flies and missing a few. We had a lot of follows including a couple pickerel. Some drum and carp were cruising around the weeds, which was interesting.
We took a couple hours and tried some salmon fly-fishing without luck. No sign of fish. With the warm summer a lot of salmon may still be deep or uplake a bit, or perhaps just not in some of the usual areas. We’ll see.
We finished the day with a combination of gear and fly-fishing. Stickbaits worked best, but a fish came on a Chatterbait and I also nailed another fish or two on the fly. We landed at least 9 pike today with 3 or 4 in the 29″ to 32″ range. Water temps were around 46/47 degrees. Had a lot of follows today as well. I’d say that the pike fishing in Seneca Lake is very, very good, though not as spectacular as 2006/2007. And as usual, the daily conditions make a big difference. Pick the wrong day and you might not get bit much or at all.