Reports

Guided John and his nearly 10 year old son Hunter today starting just after 7 am. Hunter’s birthday is shortly and the trip was for him to hopefully catch his first pike. I don’t consider the pike fishing on Seneca to be easy right now, but it’s pretty good, so I wasn’t sure how things would go – especially given the clear, sunny conditions and lack of fog we had this AM.

John had the first hit on a swimbait (Lunker City Shaker/Sworming Hornet) and managed to land a very nice fish around 33″. Hunter was half-asleep and had more or less spaced on how to cast, so for the first hour I made the casts and handed him the rod to reel in. He missed a solid hit or two, then John hooked up and tried handing him the rod (which is tough to do) and that didn’t work.

Lo and behold after an hour Hunter started casting on his own, and within short order he was booming out some nice casts. He missed another hit or two and then wound up catching his first and second pike! The first was pretty small – around 20″ but the second was nicer – maybe 24″, so that was great. John also landed another nice fish or two in the 24″ to 25″ range. All in all, the fishing was decent and it was nice seeing that some successful spawning has taken place here over recent years. An angler I talked to at a gas station told me they’d been trolling up some smaller salmon recently. So that was a good sign. Relatively few boats were out and we had 61 degrees on the surface on the lake’s south end.

Northern Pike Seneca Lake