Seneca Lake out of Watkins Glen 2/28
Decided to check out Seneca Lake today with my buddy Terry. We brought tackle for salmon/trout, pike and lake trout jigging. I had pike and trout/salmon fly-gear in tow but never broke it out. This time of year there are usually a bunch of boats out targeting perch. I saw maybe one. A local told us that perch fishing wasn’t worth it. Trout and salmon action has been slow by some accounts though I know someone who has had fair to very good fishing from shore at times this winter. There are decent numbers of landlocked salmon and brown trout available on Seneca Lake. It doesn’t come close to what Cayuga has been producing, but if you live around Watkins Glen or further west, it may be worth a try on occasion – especially if you don’t like fishing around other anglers or the extra drivetime to Cayuga.
We spent most of the day (which started at 10:45 am and went till around 4:15 pm) targeting trout and salmon with spinning gear. I had a few follows from some salmon including one nice one (over 20″.) Terry got clocked at least once on a hair jig. I cast stickbaits. I connected with some silver in one area and we netted a chunky brown over 16″ that I kept. It did have two lamprey scars on it – one fresh and one healed. That was it. We did see some fish below our lures. So the salmon numbers are fair. A year or two ago we saw next to nothing! So it’s better than it was then (take this with a grain of salt given that this was our first time out in a boat there this season.)
We checked out a lake trout area and I marked a fair number of fish. Fewer than past years, but it wasn’t terrible. No hits. The conditions weren’t great for laker jigging. We tried a couple areas for pike kind of quickly as the day wound down and did not encounter any fish. Water temp on top was around 39 to 41. Lake level was low but still good for launching. I can’t argue with 62 degree air temps on the last day of February!